Parents, teachers at Missouri school want answers after string of cancer diagnoses

For years, teachers and parents at a Liberty, Missouri, elementary school have worried that something in and around their campus may be making people sick, leading to a high number of cancer diagnoses.

That fear — which initially arose after at least six staff members developed breast cancer from 2013 to 2022 — has only intensified after a beloved teacher died last fall and another at Warren Hills Elementary was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.

Fueled by that, and a concern that district and county health officials haven’t done enough to ease their minds, teachers and parents are speaking up, saying they don’t feel safe and are left wondering what to do, according to emails and letters obtained by The Star through a Sunshine Law request.

“Unfortunately, I’m not confident that we want our children attending Warren Hills any longer,” one parent wrote last month to Jeremy Tucker, superintendent of Liberty Public Schools. “Teachers are leaving because they don’t feel safe. What are our options? We do not plan to move.”

Teachers began asking questions in the fall of 2022, which lead the district to ask the Clay County Public Health Center to initiate a study, which ultimately found that breast cancer diagnoses at the school were in line with county and state figures..

But fear at the school has escalated in recent months as more parents have learned about diagnoses in past years and the concerns that teachers and staff share.

Tucker said he and his team are working to assure teachers and parents that extensive testing has been done, aiming to ensure the air, water and general environment are safe and that regular compliance checks are done on the active cell tower on campus, which is 120 feet tall and located 130 feet from the school. The cell tower has drawn the most consternation from the school community.

“It’s one conversation at a time, and then pointing to the work that has been done,” Tucker said. “We are going to do our due diligence and will continue to do that.”

The superintendent also reassures teachers, staff and parents by telling them about the study conducted by the Clay County Public Health Center, also referred to as CCPHC. He mentioned it in a November 2022 email to a concerned parent worried about staff members battling cancer.

“They completed their analysis and determined that ‘there is no evidence to suggest that the breast cancer rate at Warren Hills is higher than expected,’” Tucker wrote, “‘which means no further environmental investigation is warranted.’”

But those assurances are little comfort to many worried families and staff. In recent years, staff have not only developed breast cancer, but have been diagnosed with other types of cancer as well.

Since late January, several parents have emailed Tucker, according to the information received in the records request. Others have flooded social media with questions and concerns. They say they want to know more about the cell tower that was constructed in 2007, a year after Warren Hills opened , as well as about what additional environmental testing could be done.

“We’re having teachers that have cancer left and right,” Jena Servatius, a Warren Hills parent who has emailed the superintendent, told The Star. “It’s scary sending your kid to school every day and wondering if you’re putting them in harm’s way. Or if you’re putting them at risk for cancer just by being in that building.

“They’re telling us they’re not concerned, but we keep seeing tons of cancer cases, and it just seems like an abnormal amount.”

Just last week, the district notified Warren Hills families and staff that, in an effort to educate and be transparent, the school’s website now has a portal of information about health and environmental updates. The portal includes a timeline showing measures the school and district have taken since the initial inquiry into the breast cancer diagnoses.

In late October, one teacher wrote to the district administration in late October about her concerns and “how many cases of cancer our building has endured since we have opened.”

“As a staff member that has battled and now lives with the chance of it recurring,” she wrote, “it concerns me that not all actions or testing was done to ensure the safety of our school community.”

An unsigned letter sent to Tucker earlier this year, written by someone who said they were “speaking for several staff members here at Warren Hills,” asked what more needed to happen to warrant further investigation.

“We have not only had breast cancer diagnoses, but throat, cervical, brain, ovarian and brain tumors. ... One leading to the loss of our friend and teacher,” the letter said. “We have staff members that do not feel safe coming to work, but we care so much for our students.”

Tucker told The Star that he and his team have been diligent in addressing concerns, from initiating testing to working with county and state health officials. He said he tries to return each email and often talks to those who are concerned by phone or in person.

“I think we have done a lot,” he said. “Is there more than can be done? Perhaps.”

The district, he said, is open to looking into whether more environmental testing is needed.

Tiffany Schrader, a nurse who has two children at the elementary school, is one of the parents who emailed Tucker this year with her concerns.

“It’s just that people are very uneasy, and they just don’t know what to do at this point,” Schrader told The Star. She said she feels like the concern from “our teachers” is “falling on deaf ears.”

“It’s fallen on deaf ears for a long time.”

Teachers grow concerned

The principal at Warren Hills reached out to the district at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year about a number of her staff that had been diagnosed with breast cancer. And those staffers, “were beginning to express concerns about the safety of the building,” according to an email obtained by The Star.

A month later, four teachers reached out to the superintendent. They shared the number of employees they said had been diagnosed with “various cancers” in the previous six years and that several employees have had breast cancer, “the exact same kind,” the email said.

“We would like to have a meeting with you to see what else can be done,” they wrote. “We would be happy to discuss this with the school board if needed as well.”

As soon as he and his team learned about the diagnoses, Tucker said they reached out to the Clay County Public Health Center, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and other entities.

After conducting a study into the cancer cases, Clay County health officials released a report and detailed the situation.

“Since 2013, Warren Hills Elementary School has had six female staff members develop breast cancer,” the report said. “Out of an abundance of caution, Liberty Public Schools (LPS) reached out to Clay County Public Health Center (CCPHC) to determine if staff reports of breast cancer were attributable to the school environment.”

Ashley Wegner, CCPHC’s deputy director, said after epidemiologists conducted calculations, “it showed that in the state of Missouri, in Clay County and in Warren Hills, we would have an expected rate of occurrence of breast cancer.”

“And they do that through population studies and then number of cases that were typically getting reported. So the rates in Warren Hills were not above what we would expect for the population size at the school.”

When Tucker emailed the concerned parent in November 2022, and described the study and its findings, he also told her that the district had “been in contact with the Missouri State Department of Health epidemiology team and the Missouri Cancer Registry (MCR).”

He said the district was “encouraged to learn that all three organizations (MCR, CCPHC and the Missouri Department of Health) agreed with the CCPHC findings.”

A spokesperson with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, however, told The Star that the agency didn’t issue an opinion but offered assistance during the study.

Lisa Cox, of DHSS, said the agency was first alerted about the Warren Hills’ cancer cases in 2022 by an epidemiologist with the Clay County Public Health Center. From there, a representative from the DHSS Office of Epidemiology spoke with the Clay County epidemiologist about the issue in Liberty, she said.

The DHSS epidemiologist also “conducted a brief and preliminary review of breast cancer incidence data for the school, Clay County and the State of Missouri,” Cox said.

“DHSS did not make any conclusion about the incidence rate of breast cancer in the school as compare(d) with the county and state rates,” Cox said.

Wegner said the Clay County Public Health Center “developed this report jointly with DHSS.”

The Liberty school district said “the state’s recollection stands in stark contrast to the recollections, notes and emails of the LPS team, and the CCPHC team,” as officials understand it.

In mid-September 2022, the district said that the state epidemiologist said in an email that he would review provided data and “look into things a bit more, then draft a statement for internal review.”

“There was a follow up meeting on October 3, 2022, at which time the MDHSS indicated and concluded that there was no evidence of a cancer cluster,” the district said. “CCPHC concurred with this conclusion. Unfortunately, (the state epidemiologist) indicated that their Public Information Office would not allow MDHSS to provide this conclusion in writing.”

Missouri DHSS was unable to provide a conclusive statement on whether further cancer investigation was necessary due to several key limitations, Cox said.

“First, we could not definitively confirm the indicated cases among Warren Hills staff or whether the individuals were employed at the school during their diagnosis period, making it difficult to link them to potential environmental exposure,” she said. “Additionally, the statistical methods used to assess cancer incidence are designed for larger populations, not small, localized settings like a single building or workforce. Applying these methods in such cases leads to wide confidence intervals and unreliable conclusions.”

Cox further stated that DHSS provided information to the Clay County health department on how the school could contact the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the situation.

“Our cancer inquiry procedures call for us to direct workplace investigations to OSHA,” she said, “because that is within their authority.”

The district said that in the Oct. 3 meeting, representatives for Liberty schools asked DHSS if there was anything else that they could explore.

“MDHSS responded that LPS could contact OSHA but did not seem to recommend this since the findings were clear that there was no evidence of a cancer cluster,” the district said.

DHSS provided The Star with an email from Oct. 4 2022 where the state epidemiologist told the Clay County epidemiologist: “Lastly, as we discussed, since there may still be some concern that this is related to the workplace, it is indeed something that would need to be addressed through OSHA.”

At this point, the district said it has not contacted OSHA.

As more staff members have been diagnosed with various types of cancer, the district lets the health center know. But that initial group of six cases of breast cancer has not grown, Wegner said.

“I’m talking strictly from an epidemiologic perspective, we would not lump all of these cancer cases into a similar bucket,” Wegner said. “We have those six cases from 2022 that were originally looked at as the cluster. Anything outside of that is 100% considered unrelated.

“At this juncture, we don’t have enough information to give the school any recommendations to change anything that they’re doing.”

A breaking point

By the end of January, as reports surfaced of another possible cancer diagnosis, concerns grew and staff and parents began emailing the superintendent with questions.

One mother, who previously had reached out to the administration in the fall of 2022 with her concerns, asked if “the county is revisiting this issue at our school?”

Schrader, who is the vice president of Warren Hills’ Parent Teacher Association, emailed Tucker for information on the cell tower and whether it is located too close to the school building.

“Over the past few years, several teachers at Warren Hills have been diagnosed with cancer,” Schrader said. “... While I understand there are many factors that contribute to such health issues, it is hard to ignore the possibility that the proximity of the cell tower and other environmental factors with ... could be a contributing factor(s).

“... I trust that you will take this concern seriously and explore all avenues to ensure that the school is a safe environment for all. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Another parent also inquired about the tower and asked that Liberty Public Schools check local regulations and seek expert advice.

The superintendent responded, saying that “the health and safety of our students and staff is our top priority.”

“We understand that questions about environmental factors, including the T-Mobile tower, are deeply important to our community,” Tucker wrote. “We want to assure you that we take these matters seriously. … In response to concerns, we reached out to T-Mobile. They provided a report indicating that the cell tower is in compliance with the standards set by regulatory agencies.”

Wegner said the county health department continues to work with the district to educate staff, teachers and parents.

“We have a very close relationship with the school,” she said. “And we want to help the school with assisting their community, because it’s also our community, in getting to a spot where they’re comfortable.

“I think, from our perspective, we have done the part that we are able to do with the information that we have.”

She said she understands that “fear is a real thing.”

“And it’s an entirely different beast,” she said. “Our approach is to be present and provide the education. But that isn’t always exactly what people feel like they need.”

That’s when communication becomes key, Wegner said, and finding out what people feel the problem is and “what do you need as a resource to help with this.”

“I think where we’re struggling is what is the expectation?” she said.

And for parents, many said they want to know that everything that can be done has been done to investigate the cancer diagnoses. Not just at the district and county level. But the state level as well.

“It’s prevalent, it really is,” said Schrader. “And I know there’s multiple factors. I know that everybody could get cancer at some point in our lives.

“I just feel like if there is more data to be shared, there should be and then, if not, and there’s nothing else that they can do, it needs to be advanced further to where other people can look into it.”