Steph and Ayesha Curry's foundation funds clean water in Oakland schools
Steph and Ayesha Currys foundation provides Oakland schools with water filtration
Clean drinking water is a basic necessity for growing students, and now, the Oakland Unified School District is tapping into new funds to keep clean water flowing in the schools, after high levels of lead were again found last year. The Currys provided a $650,000 grant.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Clean drinking water is a basic necessity for growing students, and now, the Oakland Unified School District is tapping into new funds to keep clean water flowing in the schools, after high levels of lead were again found last year.
"Currently we have 172 across the district in all of our TK to 12 schools," OUSD Spokesperson John Sasaki said.
The district first installed water filtration machines in every school back in 2018, when tests first showed high lead levels in school drinking water.
The machines from Brita, FloWater and various companies provided a quick solution, as the district inspected and replaced pipes and fixtures.
What they're saying:
"I drank the water from the fountains, and didn't like it. Had my stomach hurting, and then they started installing the flow system, so started using it," Emanuel Funchus, a McClymonds High School student.
Sasaki says all 77 schools have more than one machine, and now, thanks to a $650,000 grant from Stephen and Ayesha Curry's foundation Eat.Learn.Play. that was announced last month, there are another 60 additional FloWater machines being installed.
"It was something that needed to be addressed immediately and totally in line with our mission, so we were happy to jump in and see what role we could play." on behalf of these kids," Chris Helfrich, CEO of Eat.Learn.Play. said Thursday.
Helfrich says along with another 60 units, the money will help keep the machines maintained.
"There's also some ongoing maintenance that our grant is helping to fund as well as the purchase and distribution of 20,000 reusable water bottles so they have something to drink the water out of," Helfrich said.
"Every Oakland school has at least one... and we are in about 2,000 schools across the United States," Rich Razgaitis, CEO of FloWater said.
Razgaitis says they provide machines in some 2,000 schools nationwide.
"This just strips out lead, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals," Razgaitis said.
The district also has created a water filtration system dashboard for its website, showing the ratio of machines to students at each school. The goal is to have one water machine for every 100 students. Each unit costs about $7,000.
The district is using some funds from the sugar-sweetened beverage tax revenue to help fund the effort.
"Kids are not only better hydrated, but not drinking the sugar-sweetened beverages the way this tax was designed, and so it's really killing two birds with one stone," Sasaki said.
The machines are a short-term solution, Sasaki said, as they continue mitigating the longer-term infrastructure challenges.
"We're doing lots of testing in our schools we are mitigating any situation where we find a fixture or faucet, drinking fountain that has elevated levels of lead, taking those out of service," Sasaki said.
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