Last month, Fremont’s school district told parents at the Lila Bringhurst Elementary School that the Bay Area Air District asked for its help in distributing a notice about air pollution.

Air quality is often on the mind for Bringhurst parents. The public school is less than 1,000 feet from Tesla’s factory, which is under investigation by the air district for allegedly submitting inaccurate emissions reports. But this new message was an easy one to miss, multiple parents told SFGATE.  

For Bringhurst parent Jenny Lin, the air district’s letter was vague. She pointed out that it didn’t say emissions could increase, only that they would be modified and that the company wanted to install new abatement equipment.

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“It was sort of obfuscating,” Lin told SFGATE.

An Oct. 1 anonymously authored Substack post claimed the factory would spew “THIRTEEN times more emissions” from two aluminum furnaces. As the post spread in community group chats in America’s happiest city, parents’ alarm bells started ringing. The article uses calculations from the air district’s own engineering documents to show how emissions were expected to increase. It also pointed out eyebrow-raising redactions in the proposal’s latest engineering review.

A Change.org petition posted Saturday, which surpassed its goal of 1,000 signatures, called on the air district to pump the brakes on the permit, alleging that the notification process did not clearly explain how Tesla proposals may affect the air their kids breathe. But now that the Monday deadline for public comment on Tesla’s proposal has passed, parents are asking the air district to extend it so they can get a better sense of what the proposal means for their kids’ health, and what precautions they may need to take.

“We’re not asking for the impossible,” said Bringhurst parent June Hu, who posted the petition. “We just are asking for a chance to understand.”

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Exterior of Lila Bringhurst Elementary in Fremont, Calif.

Bringhurst parent Phoebe Yu is a former air quality advocate and has worked with organizations like the OpenAir Collective, an organization that promotes carbon dioxide removal. But like some of her neighbors, the Fremont Unified School District’s one and only email blast about the air district’s notification on Sept. 3 didn’t catch her attention. 

“There are a lot of messages that are moving around, and it’s really easy to miss stuff like this,” Yu told SFGATE. “If you only mention it once, and that’s it, and the wording is not that strong, you’ve already lost me.”

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The school district uses an opt-in app called ParentSquare to send mass communications to its community. Though district spokesperson Jesse McGrath told SFGATE Wednesday that “100%” of the parent population at Bringhurst have signed up, several parents told SFGATE that they only found out about the notification after it started........

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