#Workers repainting NYC school with 1,000-plus lead paint violations

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A Sherwin-Williams delivery man delivers 4 five-gallon buckets of paint to P.S. 90 Horace Mann school in Queens
Dan Herrick

Workers on Thursday were repainting a Queens elementary school that racked up more than 1,000 positive tests for lead paint — as neighbors expressed outrage over the alarming situation revealed by The Post.

A custodian at PS 90 Horace Mann in Richmond Hill took delivery of four, 5-gallon buckets of Sherwin Williams ProMar 400 Extra White paint from a van driver around 9:45 a.m.

The shipment arrived ahead of the scheduled Sept. 10 re-opening of city schools, which plan to offer “blended” education in which kids will alternate between classroom and remote learning, due to the coronavirus pandemic — although 26 percent of parents have already opted for full-time, virtual instruction.

The delivery also came just hours after The Post exclusively reported that PS 90 — which has an enrollment of 641 kids in pre-K through fifth grade — amassed the worst record for lead-paint violations of any city school over the past five years.

The custodian said the paint was bound for the school’s fourth floor, even though there’s “no elevator, no AC.”

“Yeah, man,” he said.

“All this week, all next week, we paint.”

The school’s interior doors and stairwells have already been covered over, he said, and there appeared to be fresh paint on the first floor, where most of the lead paint was found.

Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Law show that inspections of PS 90 confirmed the presence of lead paint there 1,139 times between 2015 and 2019.

There were 892 positive tests recorded in classrooms and another 156 in pre-K rooms, as well as 46 in bathrooms and another 45 in the school’s kitchen.

Roger Lackhan, who’s lived across the street from PS 90 for the past 26 years, said he was concerned for his granddaughter, who’s scheduled to start pre-K there next month.

“My God! Unbelievable! I am going to make some phone calls today,” said Lackhan, 49, who works in the hotel industry.

“They definitely need to take care of that for sure. I have two kids that already went there and now that school is for my granddaughter. I just can’t believe that.”

Another longtime neighbor, who identified herself as Denise, 49, said her daughter had attended the school.

“The principal sent us a letter years ago about a lead problem. But it was fixed, they closed the water fountain. He said it was taken care of,” she said.

“These guys need to do more! They need a boss checking corner to corner!”

Former student Alaa Alwaisi, 15, who attended PS 90 for fourth and fifth grade and is an incoming sophomore at nearby Epic High School-North, called the test results for lead paint “shocking.”

“To be honest, it felt clean and normal,” he said.

“I never saw peeling paint, ever.”

The Department of Education has said that neither PS 90 nor four other schools with the highest number of violations had “any deteriorated lead-based paint in the Winter 2019 inspection round.”