Los Angeles Unified School District

The other program mentioned in this section of Act is The Healthy School Environments Assessment Tool (HealthySEATv2). It was adapted from a database tool originally developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District to conduct self-assessment inspections in its approximately nine hundred school facilities and substantially modified by EPA to make it widely available to the more than fourteen thousand school districts nationwide. It is free software that can be customized and helps school districts evaluate and manage their school facilities for key environmental, safety, and health issues. EPA has also included critical elements of all of its regulatory and voluntary... 

An early assessment by one commentator has concluded that the lack of specific guidance by Congress and the voluntary nature of the guidelines to be proposed are not adequate to build environmentally appropriate schools in an effective manner. The author reviewed the case study of the Vista Learning Center Project undertaken by the Los Angeles Unified School District, which was to be built on an abandoned oil field saturated with toxins. Because of the failure to undertake a full-scale environmental assessment, that school was built on land acquired 24 years before the opening date. 

Pia Escudero, Los Angeles Unified School District Mental Health Services Unit, Van Nuys, California 91406... 

---