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Monroe County Community School Corporation's PESP Strategy

Describe your Organization’s Five-Year Goals Related to Pesticide Risk Reduction

  1. Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC) desires to have a sustainable IPM program. At the beginning of our program we had our School Board adopt an IPM Policy (1997). That policy states MCCSC will use IPM methods to deal with pest problems. This policy also states that successful pest management requires “effort from all members of the Corporation.” In the spring of 2007 we convened an IPM Committee that is made up of administrators, teachers, support staff and parents. The desire of the district is to have an IPM program in the future that is at least as effective as and possibly more effective than the current one. Within the next five years there will likely be some retirements or staff changes as it relates to the staff involved with the implementation of the IPM program.
  2. The implementation of Integrated Pest Management in MCCSC created something known as the Monroe Model. While the model continues to be tweaked even in 2007, it is basically the same one we took to Kyrene School District in Arizona and Auburn Schools in Alabama in 2000. There are still school districts that have contracts with pest control operators which call for regular monthly spraying of residual pesticides in school classrooms. This tells me there is still the need for outreach services, for training and education in schools. The goal here would be to reduce the number of schools in the state of Indiana who are still spraying classrooms to zero.

What do you envision doing (broadly) to try to resolve your major issues?

  1. Education has been and will continue to be the most important part of an IPM program. MCCSC will continue to educate students, staff and the public about the benefits of IPM. We will do this through the use of the Pest Press (which now has nationwide distribution and use via the web). We will also use our IPM committee to continue to inform and educate those on our staff. We will continue to brief teachers at staff meetings and updating custodians and food service employees during safety training sessions about the need to communicate about pest issues.
  2. The IPM committee can be a viable group that assists the implementers with pest issues, but which also expresses concerns about chemical use, greener buildings and the environmental impact of policies and practices of the district.
  3. We will continue to reach out to the state educational organizations such as the Indiana School Boards Association, the Indiana Association of School Business Officials and the Indiana Principals Association. These groups have allowed us to present training sessions in the past and we must continue to educate and train new members about the benefits of IPM.
  4. We will lobby for state and federal funds to again provide demonstrations of the Monroe IPM Model in school districts. Schools are reluctant to adopt a program based on a manual or guidance from the web. They will adopt IPM when it is successfully demonstrated in their school and they are shown how to implement an IPM program.

Goal 1 and Tactics

A goal for the Monroe County Community School Corporation is to provide a sustainable IPM program in the school district long after the originators of the program have left.

One method of attaining this goal has been the establishment of the IPM committee. This committee consists of school administrators, teachers, support staff and parents. The committee is informed, but needs to be questioning and committed to the practice of using IPM in schools. They must understand the School Board policy on IPM. They must assist in the education of their fellow staff members and community members about IPM.

A second method is to continue to provide top notch service from our current program. By addressing the needs of the employees of the district and staying on top of pest issues we can provide the education and service needed for a successful program.

Our continued reliance on methods other than pesticide applications to deal with pest related problems demonstrates the success of this program. We continue to compare our complaints and applications to pre-IPM numbers and our rates are around a 90% reduction for both.

Goal 2 and Tactics

This goal is to provide outreach services or training for school districts wherever it is needed.

MCCSC personnel and others have trained other schools how to set-up and operate an IPM program for the past 10 years. The district administration is willing to continue to allow staff members to do this. While nearby school districts can be trained at little or no cost, those farther away cannot be done for nothing. The strategy for this goal requires some funding. MCCSC and its partners continue to seek out training and development funds from state agencies to further IPM in schools. At the national level the EPA has not provided recent funding to accomplish this goal.

The reports that are produced following a school IPM implementation detail the monetary costs before and after the program began. It also details the amount and frequency of pesticide applications. The numbers of children, staff and parents who would not come into contact with pesticides because of a successful IPM program is still the most important number.

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