North Central School IPM Working Group

Funding for this Working Group is provided by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Crop Protection and Pest Management Program through the North Central IPM Center (2014-70006-22486).

Conference call: April 25th, 2017

Participants:

-Alina Freund, IPM Institute of North America

-Frank Laufenberg, IPM Institute of North America

-Marcia Anderson, US Environmental Protection Agency, Center for Expertise

-Ryan Anderson, Program and Communications Manager, Midwest Pesticide Action Center

-Frannie Miller, Kansas State University

-Lynnae Jess, North Central IPM Center, Michigan State University

-Seth Dibblee, US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5

-Ruth Kerzee, Midwest Pesticide Action Center

-Otto Oemig, Dept. of Agriculture/Trade & Consumer Protection

-Mark Lesher, US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7

Agenda:

  1. Member Updates
  2. Ryan Anderson Presentation on Leveraging Outdoor School IPM
  3. Additional Questions or Comments
  1. Member Updates

-Ruth Kerzee, very excited to get funding from the Pope Brothers Foundation for establishing childcare IPM, particularly home based!

-Marcia Anderson: Bedbug webinar coming up on May 9th. Did have some unusual audio problems with weed webinar, but a recording of it will go up very quickly.

  • Spanish translation materials. The goal was twelve, still waiting on one and wanted to release all at once. Had to do some reformatting to get reworked Spanish versions on the same size page!
  • Having translation double checked now – they will do very quick turnaround. Will be released in the next week.
  • Childcare report on EPA website for IPM. Marcia can email e to distribute to the whole group.

-Mark: Recently we had an earth day function at an elementary school. Gave a good bugs vs. bad bugs presentation to 5th graders and they really enjoyed it.

  • Discussed IPM with school principal to hopefully develop program

-Seth: Visited a Montessori school in Evanston (green ribbon in Illinois) got lead platinum cert.

  • Green ribbon program is on ice right now. All Green Ribbon schools have IPM.

-Our next call will be in June;Frank sent out the Doodle Poll earlier today, please contact him at if you did not receive it, otherwise please input your availability!

-The 9th International IPM Symposium: Improving Health, Environment and Global Sustainabilityis scheduled for March 19-22, 2018 in Baltimore Maryland. The symposium had openings for session proposals related to IPM, health, environment and global sustainability.

-The National Steering Committee for School IPM submitted a session proposal, prepared by Shaku Nair from Arizona University of Maricopa, for the 9th International IPM Symposium.

  • The proposed session, titled: School IPM: Sinking Ship or Soaring Success? A Discussion, addresses 1) the role of legislation in adoption of school IPM, 2) using schools as public health information distribution centers, 3) enforcement agency perspectives on school IPM laws, 4) involvement of county health and other departments in school IPM through kitchen and food service inspections, and 5) specific school pest issues of national importance. We find out if the session proposal is selected in August of this year.
  • The session will have a panel of experts and speakers including working group member Ruth Kerzee! Presenting with Janet Hurley too.
  • In addition to the session there will also be a Meet and Greet for School IPM shortly after the official conference day ends on Tuesday, March 20th. For the meet and greet there will be a brief introduction to School IPM and then prompts for discussion with refreshments. The purpose of this event is to network in the school IPMcommunity in a slightly less formal setting – as we get closer we will be reaching out to get more people involved in the Symposium and the School IPM meet and greet. We will keep you up to date as we move closer. Please let me know if you have ideas for School IPM topics or want to kick off conversation during the meet and greet.Do any of you have feedback or questions on the IPM Symposium meet and greet or the session?
  • Seth: we had a pretty successful meet and greet at the Memphis symposium. We recognized some schools in the school IPM world. Check the records for Memphis meeting
  • I’ll include session proposal title, speakers and also 5 topics to be addressed with notes

-(Alina) SIPM Newsletter survey, please let us know if you would like to develop content for our newsletter.

  • Surveyed newsletter recipients for evaluating the newsletter content and what else
  • Editorial calendar is shaped around the feedback of the survey. Matching up the survey results with the statistics of what people
  1. Ryan Anderson Presentation on Leveraging Outdoor School IPM
  2. Ryan Anderson leads and implements Midwest Pesticide Action Center’s integrated marketing campaign and outdoors program. Before joining MPAC in 2015, Ryan led carbon mitigation strategic planning in Indianapolis, provided communication support to the Delta Institute, and served as editor in chief for the online, video-format journal the Sustainability Review. Ryan has a Masters of Sustainable Solutions from Arizona State University and holds a dual bachelor’s degree in Biology and Electronic Journalism from Butler University.
  3. Midwestern green initiative. Sharing green/natural lawn and IPM initiative. Geared towards residents but used
  4. Park ridge school district success (8 schools, 4,300 students)
  5. Go green park ridge
  6. Started in 2015, with pest pro TruGreen
  7. Policy is in control of TruGreen, keep costs manageable and keep weeds down.
  8. Recap: initial meeting—lots of trust in TruGreen
  9. 3 things:
  10. Kept feeding go green park ridge with information
  11. Make improvements for education by writing letters and events (1 kept pressure on)
  12. IMPAC why 3 applications? Only need 2. (2 Cost)
  13. Recommend fertilizing in fall and skipping summer
  14. After cost focused on lawn as living organism
  15. Mowing high
  16. Aerating
  17. Watering regularly
  18. Sessions that IMPAC has for cultural IPM practices (3 Need)
  19. Midwest grows green program may be able to expand with partners
  20. Seth: how vendor supplies IPM policy for school district?
  21. For outdoors the school district just uses TruGreen’s policy.
  22. Ruth: The IPM policies that most schools adopt – line in overall policy that says we do IPM practices. It doesn’t explicate or detail what that means. Default is what the provider suggests.
  23. Seth: They would just send the postcard back to IDPH with the policy box checked?
  24. Ruth: We went through policy line by line, and worked on it.
  25. Positive response from the board was positive because they were completely unaware.
  26. Alina: Lawn care provider, is TruGreen a quality lawn care provider or what is your profession?
  27. They want to green up the grass, used to be called ChemLawn.
  28. They have an organic option, but it is 3 times the price. They just supply the chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides)
  29. They are the largest lawn care company in illinois.
  30. Most school districts are using TruGreen
  31. Health lawn team is our partner for grants in Madison and Milwaukee
  32. Ruth: the service that we provide that is the most useful is giving them the language to use with the contractors, so they know what to say with the people they contract with.
  33. School IPM outside or inside?
  34. We did go through their full school IPM policy; they do have some lines for indoor policy. We diagnosed that policy to work off of.
  35. Outdoors is really engaging for chemical folks
  36. Leveraging outdoor IPM policy to get changes to the indoor policy too.
  37. Written IPM policy that addresses in and outdoor is the goal.
  38. We only have resources to address what people are focused on. Started on the park district (park ridge) then started working with the school.
  39. Largely based on what the community wants to do.
  40. Park ridge is elementary and middle school district.
  41. Alina: Mentioned importance of having peers talk to people from the district?
  42. Maintaining healthy grass is a large systematic approach, not just the product. Because it is a systemic approach we need to be engaging and get other people involved (peer learning) to be convincing.
  43. Ask about other districts doing?
  44. Just starting to get practical examples because a lot of the information on IPM is research – not real examples. We have started to make practical examples with forums and have people take notes on what is successful. We provide them with accurate information to get these resources at their fingertips.
  45. We will share Ryan’s contact information in the notes
  46. Echo Ruth’s point: our experience is also that outdoor IPM experiences resonate more with people than indoor work. Whole interest is triggered by pesticide application outside which created an outrage about no IPM policy.
  47. Additional Questions or Comments

-Funding available for working group members who are using Stop School Pests materials to present in the North- Central region! Please let me know if you plan a training or would like to use the materials to integrate into your trainings!

-Stop School Pests update: creating a learning management system for the eXtension website. If you need the training that website. Working out the technical details to get our domain to have its own system for certificates. Alina will share this when we have a visual for the website. I’ll be updating you as we go.

-Thank you to all of you who participated in our Working Group Priorities survey, you can find our updated priorities on the website:

-We reworked them to be more manageable to be used for our group.

  • Speaker from a large school district on how they have implemented their IPM program – they have IPM STAR and possibly having one of them present on how the program has worked.
  • Seth: Revised list of priorities is very good and helpful. Now I will work on contributing to finishing those new clear priorities.

-If you can think of a district you have worked with then we can have them talk as well in June. If everyone could please think of one.