Educators Get Course in Pest Control

Cockroaches in the classroom? Mice in the music closet? Ants in the auditorium?

Whatever you do, just don’t spray toxic chemicals around the kids, health officials warned educators at a pest management workshop Thursday.

About 50 Ventura County educators learned new ways to battle bugs and get rid of rodents during the seminar, which was the first in a series sponsored by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.

The department recently set aside $77,000 to teach schools throughout the state about reducing the use of toxic pesticides on campus. The grant pays for the seminar series, and for booklets and videos on “integrated pest management.”

“We’re trying to change people’s thinking about how they control pests,” said Lyn Hawkins, senior environmental research scientist for the department. “We don’t want them to grab the nearest pesticide when they have a problem. We want them to look at alternatives.”

Those may include setting traps to catch pests or building barriers to prevent them from getting into an area. He also suggested using natural enemies to control bugs and selecting plants that don’t attract them.

Keeping a classroom or school kitchen clean is also critical, officials said.

“Sanitation is the key,” said Bill Currie of the Arizona-based International Pest Management Institute. “Cockroaches are kind of like teenagers. If you’re not feeding them, they aren’t going to come in. They’re going to go down to McDonald’s.”

School administrators will occasionally have to use pesticides, Hawkins said, but they should use them sparingly. Research shows that pesticides can aggravate allergies and asthma, and may cause cancer, birth defects, and blood and nervous system disorders.

Ventura Unified School District has taken the lead on this issue. Last month, the school board adopted a policy that urged schools to reduce the use of pesticides.

Mike Bramlette, operations manager for the district, said it may be tough to get teachers to buy in to new methods at the beginning.

“It’s a learning process,” he said. “But once everyone understands why and sees the end result, they’ll realize that it is worthwhile.”

During the workshop, educators shared ideas on how to tackle pests on campus without using chemicals and discussed ways to prevent school staff from bringing in their own ant sprays.

They also played with “Rat Zapper” electronic mousetraps. And they donned sparkly antennae and pretended to be ants to figure out the best ways to trap them.

Organizers hope seminar participants will take what they learned back to their individual districts and set up their own pest management programs.

Gwen Tufts, risk manager for the Conejo Valley Unified School District, said her district has been moving away from toxic chemicals for several years.

“Everyone wants to be pest-free,” she said. “And parents who have kids with asthma want us to use something that won’t aggravate existing health problems.”

Lou Cunningham, director of facilities for the Oxnard Union High School District, said one of the biggest problems he faces is teachers who bring their own pesticides rather than going through the district.

“We need to get more people to get away from their old ideas and try new ways of pest control,” he said. “And we need to learn how we can implement this countywide.”