Anthony Handley (left), director of engineering for SiteSafe, and Michelle Sanders (second from left), T-Mobile director of lease and site optimization, speak during a March 21 meeting with Wyandotte’s Washington Elementary School families at the Board of Education offices on Oak Street.
‘The monster with the big red eyes’
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
WYANDOTTE – Washington Elementary School parents, guardians and students continue to protest the cell phone tower constructed atop the school, which, while not yet online, has caused worries about potential health risks.
The contract for the cell tower was approved by the school board in 2018, but construction was delayed during the pandemic. Supt. Catherine Cost and two of the current school board members, Dana Browning and President Cindy Kinney, were the only board members still serving who were parties to the contract.
During a meeting held the evening of March 21 at the Board of Education offices on Oak Street, representatives from T-Mobile and SafeSite attempted to reassure parents of the cell tower’s safety.
Cost and Kinney continued to insist that breaking the contract with T-Mobile would cost the district millions, while reiterating that T-Mobile was not amenable to moving the tower to another site.
Wyandotte Public Schools Supt. Catherine Cost (left) and School Board President Cindy Kinney meet with Washington Elementary School parents and T-Mobile representatives March 21 at the Board of Education offices on Oak Street.
Cost said to parents that they would be permitted to apply to send their children to another school in the district. She also said she had met with Mayor Robert DeSana to brainstorm “out-of-the-box” solutions, but indicated that T-Mobile representatives did not appear to be willing to back away from the cell tower atop the school.
Parents spoke not only of their own stress and concerns, but of their children’s worries and anxieties, and spoke of children experiencing nightmares, having trouble sleeping and exhibiting emotional distress about the tower as well as the possibility of leaving their school friends for a building without a cell tower.
One parent who lives near the school said her child looks at the red lights atop the tower and calls it “the monster with the big red eyes.”
T-Mobile representatives Michelle Sanders, director of lease and site optimization, and Mike Blautti, senior manager of development, as well as Anthony Handley, the director of engineering for SiteSafe, addressed attendees and answered questions posed by the board, but then abruptly rose as one and left the meeting before parents were given their promised opportunity to ask them questions.
Handley said his calculations show that the tower is safe.
“In that review, I found that the maximum exposure levels on the top of the rooftop is well below the standards for FCC for electromagnetic field safety,” he said. “Within the building will be even far less than that.”
A Wyandotte Washington Elementary School parent and her student speak during the March 21 meeting at the Board of Education offices on Oak Street.
Handley said the antennas operate on a line of sight and are directional. He said the antennas on the smokestack are directed in three directions, and are not tilted downward in any way toward the school.
He said building materials attenuate the signal inside the school greatly.
“The power levels that are being used and that I used in my analysis were the maximum power available from the radios that are installed with the antennas,” Handley said. “The maximum power that T-Mobile will be operating is also a fraction of what the FCC allows for power.”
He said the tower will accommodate 4G and 5G speeds.
Handley said the 5G designation refers to the speed the tower provides and said the frequencies do not change and the physics of the frequencies do not change.
“What is changing is the equipment,” he said. “The equipment is faster. It processes the data that’s received and transmitted from the antennas quicker, so there is lower latency, there are quicker uplink and downlink speeds, which is why it is given the 5G designation.”
He said that even with the 5G speed designations, the exposure levels on all of the school property, including ground level, the playground adjacent, inside the building and on the rooftop of the school will be far below the standards set by the FCC.
Parents also repeatedly voiced their concern over the perceived inequity of the cell tower contract, which pays the district $1,000 a month plus the cost of utilities. They have also voiced incredulity that the school board believes that the contract could not be terminated without a penalty to the district which would be in the millions.
The board was given the impression by T-Mobile that moving the newly built cell tower away from the school would cost in the millions.
Many parents went to the podium to address the board, speaking of concerns ranging from the radiofrequency waves the cell tower would emit, to the snow and ice that might drop from it onto the children on the playground below.
A cell phone tower atop Wyandotte Washington Elementary School, 1440 Superior Blvd., with ground level utility connections, has parents and children upset about the possible health risks the tower, which is not yet operational, poses to students both inside the school and on the playground.
One student said he disliked being used as a “test animal” with respect to the safety of a cell tower atop the school.
Other parents spoke of how they intentionally moved to Wyandotte for the community as well as the strong schools, and said they were upset that they might have to sell their houses at a loss to buy a house in another school district.
One parent spoke of antennae that are used in military applications and said they can be used to hurt people.
Parent leader and attorney Josh Castmore called on the school board and the community to “stop operating out of fear of T-Mobile” and Cost.
“This community needs you to stand up,” he said. “What we heard here tonight was absolute crap. T-Mobile knows that they have made a mistake.”
Castmore read aloud a specific city zoning regulation and insists that T-Mobile is not in compliance with the requirements.
“I think it is important to note that if this is a fight that T-Mobile wants, you guys will win,” he said. “But it has to be a fight that you are willing to take on.”
Castmore said to the school board that the parents should not have to take on the fight for them.
He said they were prepared to do that and had hired one of the best class-action attorneys in the country, who is an expert on 5G issues who is prepared to file suit this week against the school board, the city, Cost and T-Mobile.
“We don’t want to do that,” Castmore said. “I have been very clear with you all throughout this process, and the last thing that I want to do is sue the city or the school.”
He said his children love the schools, teachers and the community, but he feels like the parents’ hands are being forced.
“The last thing that I want to do here is threaten you, but that’s all that T-Mobile has done,” he said. “They have threatened you and they have scared you and they are talking about millions of dollars,” he said.
Castmore said that the paperwork T-Mobile submitted to the city indicated that the tower cost $10,000, yet they told the parents that it would cost $5 million to take the tower down and move it somewhere else, which he characterized as a lie.
He reminded the board of education that they work for the parents, not the superintendent.
“You need to resign this evening,” Castmore said to Cost, while attendees cheered.