The Siting of Schools Near Agriculture Calls for Creative Solutions

A U.S. president once observed of the political process, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” The current controversy about schools and agriculture demonstrates how one’s personal or institutional relationship to a problem influences the nature of solutions.

Several schools in Ventura County are adjacent to agricultural operations, mostly in Oxnard. More schools are in the planning stages. The Juan Laguna Soria Elementary School, proposed to be built in southeast Oxnard, would be surrounded on three sides by cropland.

The state Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) defines the problem of schools near agricultural land entirely in relation to its conflicting institutional mandates: Regulate agricultural pesticide use while promoting agriculture. With about 77,000 pesticides used in the United States today, DPR’s hopeless task is to determine the maximum level of each pesticide to which people can be exposed and still be “safe.” The state’s definition of safe is not “zero health risk” but “acceptable health risk.”

The Ventura County agricultural commissioner’s office sees the problem as limiting pesticide drift from fields. Its solution, which is optional and not required by law, is to impose permit conditions, such as pre-application notification and buffer zones, for a limited number of the most toxic chemicals. For such conditions to be effective, however, they must be enforced.

Concerns about pesticide drift have been raised at several local schools, including Rio Del Valle Junior High School and the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School. Parents and teachers have complained that they do not always receive notices from farmers prior to the application of pesticides. Recent press quotes from the agricultural commissioner’s office regarding enforcement problems refer to insufficient staff and an unrealistically large enforcement area.

Leaders of the Oxnard School District seem not to recognize the problem at all. Instead, they fixate on the shortage of classroom space and offhandedly defer potential pesticide exposure issues to the agricultural commissioner. Sometimes schools negotiate with farmers to further restrict chemical application but such agreements are unenforceable. All the while, they continue to site new schools as they have for the past 50 years: Choose the cheapest undeveloped site and build a sprawling campus, often miles away from the community the school serves. When viewed from this limited perspective, building in agricultural areas is about the only remaining option.

Teachers, doctors and other community members view the problem in their own ways. Teachers and students have raised serious concerns about chemical drift from adjacent agricultural operations that have been mostly ignored by school districts and Ventura County officials. Teachers in the Santa Barbara County city of Lompoc have requested transfers from schools located next to agricultural fields and some have staged walkouts to protest pesticide applications during school hours.

We know little about the effects of pesticides on children. According to the abstract from a recent medical conference organized by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, “Toxic chemicals in the environment are now recognized to cause some fraction neurodevelopmental disabilities in children,” knowledge of children’s special vulnerabilities is “scant” and “paradigms for environmental risk assessments have only begun to address the hazards confronting children.” Given this, prudent avoidance of exposure seems warranted.

There are alternatives. Other communities are already finding creative ways to site safe schools. Some school districts in Los Angeles County have built new multistory “in-fill schools” on smaller sites than the state Department of Education recommends. The Bakersfield School District recently completed a highly successful multistory downtown elementary school, with the support of parents and local businesses.

The real problems associated with schools near agricultural land, therefore, are based on inadequate pesticide enforcement, regulatory conflict of interest, incomplete medical data and blind allegiance to outdated sprawl development patterns.

It is time to start talking about different solutions--solutions that will emerge only when we begin to come together as a community.

We need an open discussion among all parties to gain common understanding of the problems concerning siting schools near agricultural uses. For this reason, the Central Coast Environmental Health Project will sponsor a public forum on pesticides and schools from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday at the Radisson Inn (formerly the Hilton), 600 E. Esplanade Drive, Oxnard.

The forum will present a comprehensive and inclusive overview of the issue, featuring Dr. Robert Levin, Ventura County public health officer; Charles Weis, Ventura County superintendent of schools; Earl McPhail, Ventura County agricultural commissioner; two physicians speaking on the special vulnerability of children to pesticides, and representatives of California Rural Legal Assistance and the Bakersfield School District. A representative of the Oxnard School District has been invited to speak. Spanish translation and child care will be provided.

For more information, call 643-6147.