Facility Masters — Training for Educational Facility Professionals

Thanks to Janet Hurley, MPA, of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service School IPM team for sharing this helpful guideline document for designing educational facilities with pest intrusion prevention in mind.
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For years I have been asked – are there any IPM guidelines out there to help me with constructing a new building. I am so pleased to announce this new Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines document from Dr. Chris Geiger and Caroline Cox. I think you will find this document most helpful.

Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines is a new free resource for designing buildings to be resistant to common pests, such as rats, mice, pigeons and cockroaches. San Francisco’s Integrated Pest Management Program initiated the project after initial pesticide use reductions achieved by the program began to level off. Program participants suspected poor design was a key barrier to further reductions.

The resource aims to compile the current body of knowledge about preventing pest problems through building design and construction. Pest management professionals, architects, engineers, researchers, educators, green building experts, IPM consultants and public agency experts contributed.

The Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines are posted on the Department’s website.

The project was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control, coordinated by the Center for Environmental Health was contracted to coordinate the project, and the guidelines were reviewed by the International Code Council and a national, cross-sector team of experts.

Janet A. Hurley, MPA
Extension Program Specialist II – School IPM
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service

Having policies and protocols in place to prevent and eliminate bed bugs in educational facilities is key to protecting students and should be an integral part of your IPM (integrated pest management) program.

This week, our peers on the Facility Masters Listserv shared several excellent resource sites on managing bed bugs:

• NC State University – School IPM for Bed Bugs
• New York City Department of Education – Bed Bug Information Kit for Schools
• EPA – Bed Bug Information
• University of Florida IFAS Extension – IPM for Bed Bugs
• Texas School IPM Guide Documents for Head Lice and Bed Bugs
• Newark Public Schools, NJ – Understanding and Controlling Bed Bugs in Public Schools

Additionally, the following resources are available in our Facility Masters Resource Library and Webcast Archive:

• Bed Bug Checklist for Residence Halls
• Webcast Archive: Effective IPM for Bed Bugs and Lice
• Webcast Presentation:  Effective IPM for Bed Bugs and Lice

The following information is provided by Janet Hurley of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

Here are a few facts that you can use and share with those in your educational institution about mosquitoes, mosquito control, and West Nile virus.

The most important single thing an organization can do is make sure the campus / school grounds are not contributing to your local mosquito populations.  Check water catchment basins, storm drains, low areas, and equipment storage yards, athletic and playground equipment, especially, for places where water might be caught and held.  Drain or treat with Bt dunks, or Altosid granules – both Green category insecticides.

Mosquitoes typically rest in vegetation or other shaded sites during the day.  If you have areas of vegetation or doorways where mosquitoes are a noticeable problem, consider treating such sites with a residual pyrethroid spray.  This would be a Yellow category treatment and should be limited to known problem areas.  Insecticides like deltamethrin, cyfluthrin, bifenthrin, and lambda-cyhalothrin can provide up to six weeks control on vegetation or building surfaces.  They can be applied via hand-held pump sprayer, backpack mist blower, or power sprayer to doorways and trees, shrubs and ornamental grass around buildings and entryways.  Do not allow students or staff into treated areas until sprays have thoroughly dried. Remember students cannot enter an area that has been treated with a Yellow Category product for 4 hours. Read more…

Birds can be entertaining and fascinating to watch in the wild, but any facility or grounds manager is fully aware of the downsides of a campus heavily-populated by birds and geese. Recently, members of our Listserv shared helpful tips and proven solutions to help discourage birds or geese from flocking on or around vital campus and school facilities or areas. We have compiled some helpful tips for anyone looking to better manage bird populations on their grounds.

To read all the tips shared by our peers on the Listserv, view the full discussions:

• Trouble with Birds
• Problem with Geese Read more…

• What office at the state level is responsible for IPM guidance and are regulations?
  • What state are you in?  In general most states have Dept of Agriculture who oversees all types of pesticide applications.  However in some states the Dept of Education can also have some say in an IPM program as well.

• We use plastic bait boxes with poisonous bait. Are you saying these should not be used? We are told they do not instantly kill the mice. They will eat bait and die later
  • Bait stations can be used, but you must remember mice and rats eat the bait or translocate the bait (move it) and will die later.  The biggest myth is they will go outside to seek water – NO – once rats and mice are in your building, they are in the building.

Few pest problems cause as much concern and anxiety for students, parents, instructors and staff as the presence of bed bugs and lice.

Inspection, prevention and immediate intervention are the keys to avoiding costly and troublesome infestations of these unwanted pests, which present special challenges that should be addressed with targeted IPM initiatives to ensure a healthy learning environment.

Get some tips and best practices from these IPM for Bed Bugs Resources: Read more…

The national school IPM steering committee recently published two free IPM case study documents: The Business Case for Integrated Pest Management in Schools: Cutting Costs and Increasing Benefits and Reducing your Child’s Asthma using Integrated Pest Management: A Practical Home Guide for Parents

I think that you will find both documents both useful and informative

Please let me know what you think of them

The December School IPM 2015 eNewsletter features the following articles: Building Out Pests, Pest Presses Provide a Wealth of Information, and Parents: Become an Advocate for IPM in your Child’s School.

 http://www.ipminstitute.org/school_ipm_2015/Dec11_eNewsletter.htm

• What are more natural products like seventh generation?
  • This is a good handout from Healthy Schools Network on green cleaning products http://www.healthyschools.org/documents/green_cleaning_guide.pdf