Updated 3/12/2025

Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) has taken proactive measures to ensure the health and safety of our students and staff, especially when it comes to water.

Back in March 2017, our district started voluntary water testing, which is a practice not commonly adopted by school districts across the state or nation. Now, however, new regulation through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current Lead and Copper Rule Revisions requires city and county government entities to take on the role of conducting water testing for any school districts who voluntarily undergo this process. We will work alongside Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa, the City of Temple Terrace, and the City of Plant City as they will now assist us this with task in our schools.

During this process, any fixture with lead concentrations higher than 10ppb will immediately be taken out of service. Mitigation measures will be taken to correct the issue, which may include replacing the fixture, supply lines, valves, and/or piping. The fixture will be retested to ensure levels are below the 10ppb threshold before putting it back into service.

We will continue to post test results on this webpage as they become available: Hillsboroughschools.org/watertesting.

In addition to voluntary testing, our district has always complied with the EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule at the eleven school sites where we manufacture the drinking water. The EPA requires public water systems to perform routine water quality testing to ensure that the water they are providing their customers meets state and federal standards.

Rest assured, knowing that our district’s Sites and Utilites team takes proactive steps to clear debris in fixtures by flushing all aerators to ensure water testing levels are accurate and low in lead count.

Please note that charter and private schools are independently managed and therefore are not part of this testing program.

If you have any questions about the testing or results as we receive them, please refer to this page. You can also contact our Maintenance team to ask a question.

Thank you for your continued support as we take steps to enhance safety on our campuses!