The city’s Department of Education failed to inspect an overwhelming majority of Big Apple schools for the toxic material asbestos — with more than four out of five buildings falling far short of federal standards, a shocking new audit found.
The audit by the New York City Comptroller’s Office obtained exclusively by The Post found that more than 82% of the city’s 1,700 schools built with the known carcinogen were not examined over the required three-year time frame.
“Our first job in government is to keep New Yorkers secure,” Comptroller Brad Lander said. “When it comes to our kids, the City must adhere to the rules designed to protect them from known hazards — this is not optional. Yet DOE has stunningly failed to follow the minimum national standard for asbestos management for years.”
The audit — from March 2021 to March 2024 — revealed “significant gaps in oversight” that put students, teachers and other staffers at risk of being exposed to the dangerous mineral.
The report also slammed the agency for poor record keeping among other faulty processes.
The checks are required under The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA), a US federal law enacted in 1986, which requires the DOE to inspect all schools with asbestos for potential issues every three years and to conduct periodic checks in the following months.
However, the audit found that the DOE had conducted between 200 and 250 inspections over the most recent three-year period when it needed to do 480 inspections per year.
And even when officials managed to make it to the few hundred schools in that time frame, the DOE was only able to complete the required follow-ups 22% of the time.
The troubling trend dates back to nearly every inspection cycle since 1997, according to the comptroller’s office, which found only an average of 11% of schools being properly checked on each period.
“As a former public school parent, parents put their trust in the City when they send their kids to school each morning,” Lander said.
“That is why today I am urging the Adams Administration to take swift action to come into compliance because no parent, teacher, or school staffer should feel unsafe walking into a school.”
In Brooklyn, where the DOE has the highest number of schools, the DOE completed just 13% of the required periodic asbestos inspections — while only 16% of the Queens schools were inspected over that span, according to the report.
The audit is expected to be released to the public Wednesday morning.
In a written response to the comptroller, the school’s agency said it plans to put out a formal request for more contractors to help complete inspections, acknowledging the shortfall.
The DOE also agreed with eight recommendations made in the audit, which included new protocols and policies for the inspection process, more training for custodians and better record keeping.
“The New York City Public Schools works every day to keep students safe, protected, and healthy in our schools, and we look forward to continuing these comprehensive efforts to keep schools free of asbestos,” said DOE spokesperson Nicole Brownstein.
