In late March, the parents of current and former PS 51 students met with state officials to ask questions and discuss their concerns about potential health effects caused by exposure to contamination at the school’s former site on Jerome Avenue.

The building, which was home to the PS 51 (Bronx New School) for nearly two decades, tested positive last year for high levels of trichloroethylene (TCE), a toxin linked to cancer.

While state officials tried to calm parental fears and help them organize, those in attendance said they’re still looking for more help from the city’s Department of Education and remain concerned about the health of their children.

“It’s very scary when it’s your child, and it’s not something we really know much about,” said Helene Hartman-Kutnowsky, who sits on CB 7′s sanitation and environmental committee, and whose daughter, now 18, attended PS 51 for six years.

Parents, organizing with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition under the name PS 51 Parents United, met with state health representatives inside Community Board 7 headquarters in Bedford Park.

Lenny Siegel, of the California-based Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO), was on hand to discuss some of the possible health effects linked to TCE exposure. After explaining how and why they believe the contamination was present ever since the school moved into the former lighting manufacturing plant 20 years ago, Siegel tried to allay parents’ fears that their children are at a high risk for illness.

While acknowledging that the level of exposure (for students, staff and parents) was “unacceptable,” he said the risk for exposure-related illness “isn’t that enormous.” Studies have found, he said, that for every 10,000 people with exposure levels similar to those found at the former PS 51 building, one person will get sick over a 30-year period.

“It’s not a slam dunk that because you were [exposed at the PS 51 building], you will get sick,” he said. He added that the more engaged community is, the better prepared they will be to deal with any exposure-related health issues that might come up.

The state agencies are investigating the contamination at the school’s former site and will issue a report based on their findings, which will include recommendations to the city’s DOE. Parents and community leaders are hoping the recommendations will include the establishment of a medical registry to track the health problems of current and former students who attended the school and employees who worked there.

“We know we have a finite set of people that were exposed to a chemical, and if we don’t have a central area to try and keep track of all of this, it just doesn’t make sense,” Hartman-Kutnowsky said. “If something emerges that does become a pattern, we can learn from it and prevent other things from happening, or at least know what we should be looking for.”

After the contamination was revealed to parents last year, many reported what seemed like an unusual number of health complaints from students, including headaches and vomiting.

PS 51 Parents United is looking to set up a Community Advisory Group, which would oversee how the city and state are handling the contamination issue and facilitate communication between the government and community residents. Many parents have complained of what they say is a lack of transparency and responsiveness from the DOE, and the group wants to ensure that all parents of students who attended school at 3200 Jerome Ave — and their physicians — know about the TCE levels.

“I would say maybe between a third and half of the people I know who actually got letters,” from the DOE about the contamination, Hartman-Kutnowsky said.

In an e-mail, DOE spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said letters were sent to all parents who have records in the department’s computer system, and that they have set up a page on the DOE website to keep parents informed of updates about the school.

Before the start of the new school year, PS 51 was relocated to a building in Crotona. Its former building, where the TCE contamination was discovered, was on the site of a former lamp factory leased by the DOE.

While all city-owned school buildings are required to undergo testing for environmental toxins before use, leased buildings are not subject to the same rules. Feinberg, however, said that each of the 31 sites that the DOE leased for school space were tested before the start of this school year, and came up clean.