Kyrene School District

KYRENE SCHOOL DISTRICT IPM PROGRAM Dawn H. Gouge, Carl J. Martin & Kirk A. Smith

Dr. Marc Lame, is a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. He is a difficult man to be around if you are not an IPM advocate, and almost impossible to say "no" or "I don't have time" to. He has been a national leader in changing the way public schools conduct pest control practices on their campuses. Traditional methods typically reply on a curative approach using chemical pesticides for control of insects, rodents and weeds. Marc's program however turns tradition on its head and utilizes an approach called Integrated Pest Management. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) relies on a variety of management strategies based on the biology and ecology of the environment. IPM is founded on educational programs and training workshops. The result is a significant reduction in the amount of chemical pesticide usage and at the same time a reduction in pest problems. To use another parlance what we are talking about here is risk reduction. In 2000 Marc approached the Kyrene School District in Arizona to see if they would be interested in adopting the Monroe IPM model and three schools were chosen for a year-long pilot study. Marc has received funding from the Region IX office of the Environmental Protection Agency to start pilot programs. Mr. Stan Peterson (Facilities Manger for the school district, who will now be referred to as "Stan-the-Great") agreed to cooperate with the study. Marc enlisted the aid of the Urban IPM team (University of Arizona), Mr. Carl Martin of the Arizona Structural Pest Control Commission (SPCC), Dr. Robert Corrigan (vertebrate pest expert) and Mr. Mike Lindsey (local IPM expert) to initialize and sustain the program for the school season. An initial pest audit of the entire school grounds and buildings was conducted to ascertain the extent of the pest problems. Based on pest audit findings a prescription was written for each of the pilot schools. The program at this point received a skeptical reception as school faculty and staff had concerns regarding costs and increasing workloads. But our group had a secret weapon in the form of the friendly, disarming and enthusiastic Mike Lindsey, who visited each site regularly, became the well known "Bug Man". Mike operates much as a virus might; he gets inside a person undetected, then reprograms your code from the inside out. As the year progressed and training classes ensued, the awareness and understanding of IPM increased at the sites and people at all levels began to embrace the program. Science teachers conducted classes on bugs with help from the group, and even involved students collecting bug data from monitoring traps. Woodwork classes involved the building of owl boxes to house barn owls (gopher and rodent control volunteers) in the school grounds. Stan-the-Great was instrumental in getting the districts' cooperation to help fund several of the structural and maintenance issues identified. News began to spread. After one year the pilot program was concluded. Information was complied regarding the number of pests trapped with the monitoring traps and the amount of chemical pesticide used. This pilot program saw an 85% reduction in pests and more significantly a 90% reduction in the amount of chemical pesticide applied. The following summer the district posted a Request for Proposal for industry help in bringing the IPM program to all the district schools and support facilities. Dr. Kirk Smith and Mike Lindsey conducted the required audits and training. Numerous presentations have been made to groups and media contacts. The program has been awarded two national awards and it has all been as easy as falling off a log. Mr. Roy Morris has been appointed the district IPM coordinator and together with IPM specialist Kurt Kalusa they make a pretty independent team. Roy projects that it will take the district a minimum of 5 years to implement all of the IPM recommendations. This has to do with budget and man-power constraints. The program has been a complete success and has resulted in numerous mini-research projects and related training opportunities. Subsequent programs have been initiated in other areas. A pilot program in the eastern half of the Navajo Nation is just concluding. This was conducted in cooperation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs who have now decided to adopt IPM in all of their schools on the Navajo reservations. We are currently initiating programs on the Hopi and Gila Indian Reservations. We now have an excellent team which incorporates the U of A, SPCC, BIA tribal DEQ reps. and industry reps. Impacts have been numerous; the University now has an interdisciplinary IPM working group which is better connected with SPCC, other state offices, EPA, BIA, ITCA (Intertribal Council of Arizona) and local media groups. The Kyrene school district has 18,500 of our most precious people. 18,500 kids are being educated in a safer environment and involved to an extent which empowers them to instigate greater change in the years to come.