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The Tucson Unified School District has called off plans to install a new cell-phone tower at a West Side elementary school after parents complained about possible health and safety risks.

The Governing Board in mid-August agreed on a 4-1 vote to grant a five-year lease to New Cingular Wireless Corp. to construct and operate the tower at Robins Elementary School, near West Sweetwater Drive and North Silverbell Road. The tower would have been designed to look like a large light pole.

In exchange, the company had agreed to pay TUSD $15,000 a year, with the school keeping two-thirds of the revenue.

Parents, who heard of the decision through media coverage of the meeting, protested that they hadn't had sufficient notice and input — a point board member Judy Burns made in voting against the proposal.

By the end of the week, Principal Elizabeth Minno sent out a letter reassuring parents that the cell tower would not be placed on campus, although she said it might be brought up for discussion in the future.

"What I heard was that parents didn't feel it was safe, and we just felt it wouldn't be wise to proceed without giving them more input," she said, adding parents hadn't been as involved as they could have been because much of the planning occurred during the summer.

TUSD already has 24 cell towers installed elsewhere in the district and plans for another one. They're mostly on high school campuses, and they won't be affected by the Robins decision. The first board approval came in October 1997 for a tower at Rincon High School.

The debate is a microcosm of one taking place nationwide, and it's not limited to schools. Sometimes, it's neighborhood and homeowner associations that balk at the installations. But as schools search for new ways to bring in extra revenues, opponents have argued about everything from possible health impacts to visual pollution, although wireless companies say there is no evidence cell towers are dangerous.

Sue Miderski, a 42-year-old program aide, said she was concerned about the health effects the tower at Robins might have had on her daughter, Alex, a fourth-grader. "There's not enough data, in my opinion, about whether it could cause health problems or not."

Miderski said she understood that the district could use the additional revenue. "Money is a big thing in education, especially right now with the jobs and programs they've had to cut," she said. "But the safety of our children has to come first."

Nine-year-old Alex said she was worried, too.

"I just didn't want it to go up because I was afraid it could cause cancer," she said.

Parents in Brooklyn, San Diego and Denver have staged protests to try to head off new towers at schools. There are videos on YouTube. And in Oregon, board members of the West Linn-Wilsonville School District voted in July to ban cell-phone towers on district land, saying they preferred to err on the side of caution without a clear answer on health effects.

In TUSD, each of the 25 tower agreements ranges from $9,000 to $15,000 in annual lease payments. Altogether, they translate into $306,000 for the district, though that number is almost certainly higher because the companies typically pony up a bit more when leases come up for renewal.

District Planner Bryant Nodine said TUSD requires zoning approval from the city or county before any of the requests come to the Governing Board, so, presumably, there should have been sufficient public hearings and notice. In the past, the district didn't do additional outreach but simply relied on the city and county zoning departments to issue standard notifications, which typically consist of an area of about 300 feet.

Still, Nodine said, the district plans to do a better job in the future of including parents in the process.

As far as health safety concerns, Nodine said, it's not something the district gets involved in, since the Federal Communications Commission sets safety requirements that the towers must meet.

The FCC has tried to allay consumer fears, posting on its Web site answers to frequently asked questions about health. The site notes that measurements taken at towers show that ground-level densities are far below the limits the agency sets for safe exposure, noting individuals would practically have to sit on the main transmitting beam within a few feet from the antenna to be exposed to levels nearing safety limits.

Sayfe Kiaei, a professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University and an expert in wireless technology, agreed with that assessment.

"People do have concerns about medical issues, but there hasn't been any evidence or conclusive facts that show cell-phone towers have any impact," he said. "In fact, there's more power out of your microwave in the home than is being transmitted from the towers."

There have been fewer concerns expressed about the visual pollution from the towers as companies have become more adept at dressing them up, Kiaei said. A resort in Fountain Hills has one shaped like a 35-foot saguaro and another in Paradise Valley looks like a palm tree. In TUSD, most look like light poles, although Collier Elementary, 3900 N. Bear Canyon Road, is scheduled to get a palm tree tower.

"They're more appealing. They don't raise flags as much," Kiaei said.

Planner Nodine said he's not concerned that the case will create a chilling effect on future agreements. Instead, he said, there will be more certainty because the parents will have more involvement upfront.