Parents at a Brooklyn elementary school are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to step down after state agencies spent more than two years failing to clean up cancer-causing chemicals seeping into classrooms where children, many with special needs, are expected to return in weeks.
The PS 372 PTA launched a Change.org petition that had collected more than 400 signatures by last Friday, accusing Hochul's administration of leaving roughly 450 students exposed to benzene and xylene, toxic compounds linked to cancer, that have been rising through the basement floor of the school's annex building at 219 First St. in Brooklyn. The school sits near the Gowanus Canal, a stretch of waterway surrounded by dozens of brownfield sites left over from decades of gas-plant and oil-refinery pollution.
The petition does not hold back. Addressed directly to the governor, it states that New York State agencies "failed to safeguard the school community from documented toxic chemical threats in our indoor air for two and a half years, even though those same agencies determined that soil vapor intrusion mitigation was mandated." It concludes with a blunt demand, as the New York Post reported: "If you cannot protect the children, faculty and staff of PS 372, you do not deserve to be Governor of New York State."
Neither the DEC nor Hochul's representatives returned the Post's requests for comment.
The timeline tells the story of a bureaucracy that moved at a crawl while children kept showing up for class. In March 2024, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation vowed to address the problem after air and soil sampling revealed alarming levels of toxic compounds seeping into the annex. Roughly a year passed before the agency installed a sub-slab depressurization system, a network of pipes and fans designed to pull harmful gases from beneath the building and vent them outside.
That system did not solve the problem. Parents learned this summer that toxin levels inside the building remain above normal despite the mitigation work. On August 12, the DEC sent a letter to school administrators announcing plans to install heat recovery ventilators, essentially air filtration units, as an additional measure. Then came the Friday notice: the ventilators will not be in place before the school year starts.
The school year begins in less than three weeks. Parents now face a choice between sending their children into a building with elevated toxin levels or pulling them out of a program many of them cannot replace.
Julia Finegan, a parent with children going into pre-K and fifth grade at PS 372, told the Post:
"It feels wildly unfair to families who are being expected to enroll their children in three weeks into this situation."
Finegan pointed out that PS 372 serves students who depend on inclusive classrooms, settings that pair general-education students with those who have special needs. Those families have few alternatives.
"Unfortunately the DOE does not provide a lot of opportunities like our school. We have a lot of families who need an inclusive classroom for their students and they don't have anywhere else to go."
The annex is not the only building with problems. Public records show that PS 372's main building at 512 Carroll St. was the site of a petroleum spill in June 2004, more than two decades ago. The DEC never identified the source. The agency recommended installing a vapor barrier to stop toxic chemicals from migrating into the school. That barrier was never installed.
When soil and air samples were taken at both the annex and the main building in 2024, dangerous compounds turned up at both sites. Officials determined that only the annex levels were alarming enough to warrant intervention. The main building, where a known spill was never remediated and the recommended fix was never applied, received no action.
Directly across the street from the school sits a Con Edison facility with what the Post described as a lengthy history of environmental problems. The Gowanus neighborhood's contamination runs deep, the product of industrial activity that left behind polluted soil and groundwater across the area. Hochul's administration has faced criticism from within her own party on other fronts, but this fight involves something more visceral than policy disagreements: parents watching their children walk into a building where the air is not clean.
Walter Hang, president of the Environmental Health Research Group, which leads toxic cleanup campaigns across New York State, said the DEC's approach does not match the scale of the contamination. He described the planned heat recovery ventilators as "little vacuums" and dismissed the idea that they could address the underlying problem.
"This system isn't designed to operate in this situation. The only solution is to get rid of the pollution."
Hang called the situation "an unbelievable fiasco" and said the governor owes the public an explanation. He went further, questioning whether Hochul deserves to remain in office if she cannot enforce the state's own environmental mandates.
"If she can't protect public health and the environment by strictly enforcing all of the legal mandates, I don't think she [should be our governor]."
His assessment carries weight. Hang is not a political operative. He runs an organization dedicated to environmental health research. His conclusion, that the only real fix is excavating the contaminated soil, not layering filtration systems on top of it, directly contradicts the DEC's incremental approach.
The governor, meanwhile, has shifted into campaign mode. Hochul launched a multimillion-dollar ad blitz as she faces a challenge from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican gubernatorial candidate. A Siena University poll showed Hochul leading Blakeman 49% to 39% among likely voters, though other right-leaning pollsters put her advantage in the single digits. Whatever the margin, the governor has been focused on her reelection campaign while state agencies under her authority have failed to deliver on a cleanup they promised more than two years ago.
Hochul has drawn fire on multiple policy fronts during her tenure, including her push to impose new state-level gun regulations and her handling of legislation that has provoked backlash even among some Democratic voters.
Blakeman did not hold back. The Republican candidate framed the contamination as a direct failure of Hochul's leadership, pointing to the age of the children affected.
"It is horrifying that Kathy Hochul has forced pre-K and kindergarten children to breathe air contaminated with cancer-causing toxins for over two years while state agencies sat on their hands."
"Leaving our youngest, most vulnerable children in a toxic basement is an unforgivable betrayal."
The New York City Department of Education, for its part, offered a statement that read like every bureaucratic reassurance parents have heard before. A DOE spokesperson told the Post:
"We are taking this issue seriously and are working closely with our state partners to ensure that the appropriate measures are in place to maintain a safe learning environment at P.S. 372 when we open on time for the 2026-27 school year."
Parents have reason to be skeptical of that promise. The DEC said it would address the problem in March 2024. It took a year to install a system that did not bring toxin levels back to normal. The next fix, the ventilators, will not be ready when school opens. At every step, the timeline has slipped while officials assured families that conditions remained safe.
New York's Democratic leadership has faced a pattern of internal friction and external criticism in recent months, from controversial legislation reaching the governor's desk to federal courts pushing back against state policies. The PS 372 situation is different in kind. It is not an ideological dispute. It is a concrete, measurable failure to protect children from chemicals that cause cancer.
Michelle Tsai, the parent who started the Change.org petition, rejected the premise that the contamination is simply too difficult to fix.
"I reject the idea that it's too hard to clean up the contaminated soil under our school. All of us are fighting for our kids' health, and we're not going to stop. What we need is for our leaders to fight for us."
The petition now has more than 400 signatures and continues to grow. Parents are weighing whether to pull their children from the school entirely, a decision that would be painful for any family, but especially for those whose children depend on PS 372's inclusive classrooms. Similar frustrations with Democratic leaders failing to deliver on basic promises have surfaced in cities across the country.
Several open questions remain. No one has publicly identified the exact source of the soil vapor intrusion at the annex, whether it originates from the Con Edison facility across the street, the broader Gowanus brownfield contamination, or something else. No specific timeline for the ventilator installation has been disclosed beyond the admission that it will not happen before school starts. And the main building at 512 Carroll St., where a petroleum spill went unremediated for more than twenty years and a recommended vapor barrier was never installed, has received no intervention at all, even after 2024 testing found dangerous compounds there.
State agencies have had since March 2024 to fix this. They installed one system that did not work well enough, promised a second that will not be ready in time, and assured parents the air is still safe, all while the governor's office declined to comment. When courts and critics alike have challenged New York's governance, the administration has found its voice. On the question of whether the air inside a school full of children is clean enough to breathe, it has had nothing to say.
A government that cannot keep poison out of a kindergarten classroom has no business lecturing anyone about priorities.
