chancellor dennis wolcott opened the meeting with a dramatic statement. >> first i want to start outizing to all of you. >> reporter: he followed the apology with disturbing news. >> we decided to do environmental reviews. your school came with a result that we were not satisfied with, with an elevated level of tce. >> tce is a carcinogen, prolonged exposure can call parkinson's, cancer, even death. tests at p.s. 51 showed tce levels at a hundred times worse than what's considered safe. >> based on the final confirmation, we thought we needed to shut the building down. >> reporter: parents are upset. >> you are using euphemisms. you're trying to be nice. that was a building that was scoring chemicals that were cancer causing agents and because of the vicinity and the children that are involved, you didn't care. >> and you guys, board of ed, first allowed it to be used as a school for our children. i think it's so inappropriate. >> reporter: but the parents were even more upset by the fact that the department of education discovered the contamination in january, yet parents weren't to