(Joellen Lampman) So we're going to move on now to
to look at and listen to some
people that
work in organizations that
work directly with schools.
And I'm going to give very brief
introductions because everyone only has
20 minutes. I want to mention that
we have much larger
descriptions of everyone's bios on our
website
if you're interested. So we're going
to start off with
Lynn Braband, now retired IPM Educator
for the New York State IPM
program. He joined the program in May
of 1999
and then retired in May of 2020.
He is a certified wildlife biologist and
he's had major responsibilities in
assisting New York State schools and
municipalities and
the implementation of IPM. We're thankful
we were able to convince him to
continue for a little while longer to
help us organize this conference and
present this information today.
So thank you Lynn.
(Lynn Braband) Thank you Joellen
I will be reporting on the results of
formal and  informal surveys that our
program has been
involved with of school districts
throughout New York state
on their pest management policies and
practices
over the last 20 years.
(Debra Marvin) Lynn, I'm going to butt in here now and Joellen did remind people that we
need to do that pre-test but maybe
they're not
remembering they need to go into that
chat box and the link is in there.
The link is provided for the pre-test
link,
and click on that--That will pop up and
that's something that they can do
quickly now or in between speakers
this morning but has to be done before
the end of the morning.
(Lynn Braband) Okay and we have something else for you
to do in the chat box, 
and if everybody would be willing to just
take a minute
and write in the chat box your
responses to these
three questions. We're not going to
discuss them during this presentation
but of course you can see
what everyone else has written in the
check box.
Do most New York state public school
districts have a pest management
advisory committee?
What do you think?  Do most school
districts have a policy for managing
food outside the cafeteria?
And, have the number of districts that
are routinely aerating their athletic
fields
increased over the last 20 years? So, again
we'll just take a minute if
you would look at the chat box and
share your perceptions on that.
I should have some elevator music
playing.
Okay if you like, you can continue
responding to the chat box.
In 2013 our program partnered with
the state's
departments of health and
education, and the school facility
managers organization,
and surveyed all the public school
districts and BOCES
districts within the state and the
objectives of our survey
were to evaluate the status of ipm in
public schools.
...To provide guidance for research and
outreach, and to gauge changes from a
similar
survey which was done in 2001. And to
ascertain the
impacts of the pesticide neighbor
notification law
and the child safe playing field act. And
I
believe one of my colleagues plans to
put within the chat box the
link to the actual survey results
if you want to read the whole thing
that's in our
website as I am talking here.
Okay we received,  we had a 17 percent response
rate
to the 2013 survey. This
is in contrast to 2001 where we had an
80 percent
response rate and
although the statistical people that we
worked with, with the state department of
health
 did assure us that 70 percent was was still a
good number to 
get to give us dependable results
that we could look at.
There were a couple other things which
helped to boost our confidence
particularly in comparing the two
surveys
and that we asked the school
districts to classify their school
district as predominantly
urban, suburban, or rural and the results
were very similar between the two
surveys.
Likewise, the regions of the state
in which the respondents' districts
came
were very similar percentage-wise
between the two surveys.
So the 2013 survey... three-quarters of
the responding districts
indicated that their district had a
written pest management policy.
This was up from 2001 survey where about
half of the districts
indicated that they had a such a policy
and although an increase between the two
surveys most districts
in 2013 did not have a pest management
advisory committee.
In 2013, the most frequent pest
management related
practices which school districts were
involved with
were inspections, monitoring, sanitation
record-keeping, education, and pest
exclusion.
And most districts in the 2013 survey
did not have a policy concerning food
outside of the cafeteria.
We did not ask that question in 2001.
In the 2013 survey,
approximately a third of the responding
districts indicated that they had
certified pesticide applicators on staff.
That's down from the results of the 2001
survey
where
half the respondents indicated that they
had certified applicators
on staff.
In both surveys, most of the districts
indicated they did not have regularly
scheduled pesticide applications.
In the 2013 survey, about 23 percent
said that they did have such regular
schedule applications in instructional 
buildings,
while nine percent said they had such in
non-instructional buildings. And again, these results were little changed from
2001.
2001. The top
10 pests--most problematic pests--
for school districts
were very similar with a couple major
changes
between the two surveys.
In both surveys, the most frequent and
troublesome pests for New York state
schools were ants,
stinging insects, mice, and weeds. Geese significantly increased between
the two surveys from 14 percent
in 2001 to a quarter of the responding
school districts in
in 2013.  In contrast,
flies dropped by about half between
the two surveys.
We also, in 2013, gave the
responding districts an option to write
in
a pest which was not in that long list
which we gave them. And the most
frequent write-in was poison ivy.
Comparing structural pest management
techniques which schools were involved
with--between the two surveys
in 2013 compared to 2001--there was a
decreased use
of vacuuming, structural modifications,
baseboard spraying of the pesticides and
crack and crevice applications of
pesticides.
And this is comparing some of the
outdoor techniques and you see
that in 2013 that most districts
routinely use raised mower height
while a few school districts
routinely use soil testing.
But most districts routinely aerated in
2013 and overseeded in 2013.
Here, you see that
overseeding, in terms of as a routine
practice,
greatly increased between the two
surveys
as did aeration.
In 2013 but not 2001 we asked
questions about the schools
using so-called minimum risk pesticides.
Fourteen percent of the respondents said
that they used those routinely,
twenty four percent moderately
frequently, and sixty percent
said infrequently.
In both surveys we asked questions about
in the previous year receiving
complaints about both pests and
pesticides.
All school districts or most school
districts had received complaints about
pests especially from school
staff (81 percent of the responding
districts),
while very few of the districts
indicated that they received complaints
about pesticides and that's these
percentages were little changed from the
2001 survey.
We looked at money spent by the
school districts on pest management
related expenses
in two different ways and not
surprisingly
in the year prior to both surveys 
it increased, extrapolating in
the 2013 survey in the previous
year
to that survey we extrapolated that
about nine million dollars was spent by
schools statewide on
on school management related practices
compared to three million dollars
as reported in a 2001 survey.
In 2013 and but not in 2001,
we asked questions about
both neighbor
notification law and the
chapter 85 "child safe playing field" act.
Concerning the neighbor notification law,
almost 90 percent of the respondent
district said that they had no problems
implementing it.
Almost 40 percent of the districts said
that the law had resulted
in a reduction in use of pesticides by their
district.
In the previous year, two-thirds of the
responding districts
said that fewer than 10 of their
stakeholders had indicated that they
wanted to be put on the 48-hour
notice of a pesticide application list.
In fact a third
said they had no one
--in terms of chapter 85.  About 60 percent
of the school districts said that
chapter 85 had little impact on their
pest management practices...
that they had already been doing those
practices which put them in compliance
with the law.
About 25 percent anticipated a major
impact and they anticipated 
difficulties in managing their athletic
fields and grounds.
20 percent indicated that they were making
moderate changes as a result of the law
and were looking at alternatives
as of 2013.  80 percent of the school
districts said they
had not filed any requests for emergency
pesticide application determinations. Of
those that did, the most frequent pests
associated with those were lawn grubs,
weeds, and stinging insects.
And more than 60 percent of the
responding districts indicated that the
law had resulted in their reducing
pesticide use.
Okay, after the 2013 survey I
gradually, over several years, phoned
health and safety officials with BOCES districts, and
asked them questions about 
the district school districts that
they worked with, and
successfully interacted with about 68
percent
of the BOCES districts in the state. And
you see the rather diverse list of pests
and pest management practices which they
said that the school
districts that they worked with were had
problems with.
I asked the health and safety officials how well the schools that they work with
are in compliance with state
laws and regulations associated with
pesticides in pest management school
and you see roughly about half
of the BOCES people
said that their districts were
either very well in compliance or quite
well.
Another little
bit, you know, less said fairly well.
We also asked, 'with what do the schools
you work with need the most assistance?'
and by far
they indicated that the management of
their turf and grounds.
Undoubtedly that's associated with
when we asked, 'do districts that
you work with have concerns about
implementing the child safe playing
field act?',
and by far most of them
that both these people interact with
said yes,
they do have concerns. This is in
contrast with 
any concerns about implementing the
neighbor notification law and by far
most of the BOCES districts say the
schools they work with do not have
concerns.
We asked both these health and
safety officials if they thought that
cooperative bids would be a good idea; in
other words the school districts would
come together to
purchase pest management services or
expensive equipment.
And most of them felt that that would be
a good idea
and they also felt that programs such as
ours
should be involved in organizing
more webinars.
So, it's kind of a summary and looking
ahead of all these surveys
it could be a good idea to track the
contingencies with schools and minimal
risk pesticides and provide
assistance to the schools in terms of
research and efficacy etc on these
pesticides.
Food in non-cafeteria locations, i think probably, continues to be a
problematic situation.
There is a consistent lack of pest
management advisory committees in the
school districts.
Why the drop between the two surveys in
the use of schools'
reported use in schools of pest sighting
logs?
Structural modifications and vacuuming.
were they just artifacts
of the data?  Or is that a real
trend and, if so, what's the meaning of
that?
Schools need assistance in implementing
chapter 85 and
closely associated with that, of course,
they need assistance
in managing their turf and grounds.
Geese are an up-and-coming problem for
schools.
What's the impact of the drop of
certified applicators
on school staff? and that cooperative
bids and services
being able to do that would be a good
idea as is the development of webinars.
i have shot my wad
(Joellen Lampman)  That's great, Lynn. Thank You. I just
really want to make a pitch
for ... if these surveys do come across
your desk or your your inbox, to please
fill them out because they really do
help us to
develop our own programming and develop
our priorities. And I'll also make a
pitch for
participating next week when we're going
to have smaller
focus groups that are going to be
addressing some
issues including identifying IPM
priorities
which is going to help us to determine
where we're going to focus our
attention
going into the future. So any questions?
We can continue on
during the panel discussion so we are
going to move on now.
Our next speaker is going to be Daryl
Andreades.
She's the senior architect for the New
York State Department of Education,
where she is responsible for answering
health and safety questions directed to
facilities managers,
facilities planning. She manages the fire
safety inspection and reporting program
for district facilities across the state
and serves as an agency representative
to the emergency management office
administered by the New York State
Division of Homeland Security and
Emergency services.
So, Daryl, let us get you on
with your presentation.
(Daryl Andreades) Okay,
let's see here just going to share my
screen.
Yep and I'm going to
close this down and I''m going to 
start the slideshow.
let's stay from the beginning. (Joellen Lampman:) I just want to mention that Daryl
has linked to some resources
and you'll find that link in the chat
box.
(Daryl Andreades)  Very good. Thank you so much Joellen. I
appreciate it
and listening to Lynn, I  just realized
how jealous I am of how much
time he's been involved with
our organization and all the
organizations across the
the state. And
I'm going to talk about a little bit of the
history that I did. I 
dug deep into our files and his name
just came up
all over the place and I love
looking at these survey. When you look
at what
you're asking about and the results
you're getting
it's really something I wish we
could spend a lot more time
digging in. So, I'm just going to give
you a little more background.
I am Daryl Andreades. I'm with facilities
planning in the office of
New York State Education
Department in the office of Facilities
Planning.
I joined State Ed late spring of 2018 so
I'm very new to
the education department. Right away, they
asked me to join the healthy schools
steering committee which was
based on some of my background in my  history.
And that's where I met many of the
people who are
in the in the meeting today.
I've worked for several different New
York State agencies... 
SUNY construction fund. I worked as a
civilian with the New York
State National Guard in their facilities
planning office; 
the Division of Military and Naval
Affairs--that was a state agency,
and I did a two-year stint with New York
State Department of State in their
building codes office.
And I've also worked with New York State
Parks and Rec,
so I'm kind of all over the place.
but have just... while I've been with
State Ed, I have gotten
much more of an understanding of
some of the issues that you're talking
about today. But I'm just
also still very much of a novice
with with this topic.
So, I'm... let's see. Did I start the
slideshow? I hope I did.
um make sure that.... there we go.
Okay, so the mission is very
straightforward.
We're here to assist schools
with effective and safe pest management
practices. The
thing about state ed is that
we can't be everywhere across the state
and we really do
leave it just to district by district to
manage their
affairs. We're available
as a resource. We do have some regulatory
responsibilities but when you look at
how many
regulations and laws there are governing
the schools,
you realize that there is just a
mountain of things that they have to
report on
and that that they're responsible to do.
So
just keeping in perspective how much
attention can be brought to this.
I think it's fair to say that we rely on
the community. We rely on the BOCES
people. We rely on the facilities
maintenance officials. We rely on 
the students, the teachers, the parents to
come to us
and report what they see.  This is
something I learned
when I was working with the National
Guard.  You see something? You say
something.
You put that out there to the community
and we
look for them to come back to us when
they see something that needs more
attention because
staffing levels have been reduced. We
are working with just a skeleton
staff of people in State Ed,
and it's just not really possible to
to get on top of everything.
We want to work with our constituents to
ensure that substances and chemicals
that are used in school buildings and on
school grounds are
safe, they're non-toxic, they're applied
properly,
they're handled and disposed of
correctly, and
that prior to application proper notice
is given. That's one of the
 regulations-- openness and
transparency is very important. I'm
always
focusing on that when I have
conversations with people about this
topic.
The statute that governs this subject is
in shorthand. We call it Ed law or
part 155.
They're the rules of the Regents, the
regulations of the Commissioner of Ed.
These were put in place more than two
decades ago
and so I'm going to just give a
really brief quick
summary of where we've been
and Alejandro did a great job. He went
back much farther than I did-- I went back
into our files
and saw, you know, in 2001 a survey
that was conducted jointly
with State Ed, with D O H, with the IPM
Cornell University group and those
public surveys were published in
2001 at the same time the neighbor
notification law
was written. And I've got a slide a
little further on to discuss that in
more detail.
In 2010 and 2011, joint
action with the U.S. EPA, DEC, and State Ed, we put
together the Child Safe
Playing Fields Act, and that
banned the application of pesticides on
any playgrounds,
turf, athletic or playing fields.
So in November 14th of 2010 that
became law for daycare centers. May
18
2011, that became law for schools.
2014 was the first year of the Green
Ribbon schools program.
2015, the
Clean Green Healthy Schools Program
was rolled out.
And then, also across that time period
green cleaning practices were mandated
and best practices were defined in our
New York State Ed
manual planning standards. So these are
all
guidance documents, and in some cases
regulation
that schools need to be aware of. We
continue to update them
as we can. We find good resources and
updates. We point people to
a number of different locations where
they can find good information
on this. We get calls regularly
on pests such as bed bugs, head lice.
We continue to advise people about
what to do with poison ivy
outbreaks, or outbreaks of ground
bees so i can report.
I handle the help desk, I handle the
complaint line
and, just as
Lynn's survey showed, we have
many different examples of
students, teachers, staff,
and neighborhood community members
bringing to us specific issues that they
have
complaints about. One of our crucial
districts--one of our crucial partners in
working with districts across the state
here--is the DEC and they're an
excellent resource. Their
DEC website, again, we're going to be
referencing that in one of
the next slides.
The emergency application --
you can't have an emergency every year,
so that's something that you need to
manage that. If you are declaring an
emergency year after year after year
that's
that's an issue, and some districts
have gotten into some...
some district superintendents have
had some difficulty
explaining how they have emergencies
every year
for the same issue and using the same
techniques and applications.
So this one, we focus our attention
on
districts putting together written
management plans and having those plans
in place
and referring to them--making sure
everybody knows that there are these
written management plans that are
best practice good practice. Let's get--
you know--let's make sure that we get
these things put together. We can mandate it, but again it's really
how much validation and verification? And
we are not available to
just go around and check that
everybody's gotten them in place.
But the commissioner's reg part 155.4
does require those written plans.
We're most often working with facilities
and operations staff
in schools. We're very often educating
new hires
that haven't had the benefit of the
training from the people who recently
retired. 
So that's an issue. There's sort of
constant
change in the workforce and you're
constantly working to re-educate people,
get these regulations in front of
the new people so um
it's just the reality.
We hit these topics early and often. This
is this is very similar to the
pyramid that Alejandro showed in his
introductory slides
and we don't want people to go first and
reach for the pesticides. We want that to
be sort of the last
thing that you try... that there's a number
of different things that you can put in
place to try and
prevent that reaching for the pesticides
if there's another way to
handle what it is that you're
trying to manage.
And especially now in the time of
Covid,
sanitation is, you know, making sure
everything's sanitized and
we've got, you know, products coming into
the schools.
Again we are going to be asking
everybody on the whole team, the whole
community--all the people that are in the
schools,
around the schools working with the
different school
constituents--to encourage...
persuade. You know-- persuade
people that for our big picture, for our
long-term health and
and wellness of our kids, 
let's look for
a different approach.
Okay
we did talk about emergency application.
There's language in
section 409-k that if a
district is going to declare that they
must have
the ability to make an emergency
application they
have to work with their local department
of health-- their county
health department reps--to
make sure that there is concurrence. You
can't just decide it and declare it...
'hey our playing fields are looking a
little shabby, we haven't had a chance to
do all those other things that are
recommended, so we're going to just you know
hit it with
the latest greatest chemicals'. So we
really need
the school districts to have a good
basis
for when they're going to be declaring
the need for emergency
application of pesticides.
Grubs...you know we've had districts
calling to say 'the grub problem is just
so bad we have to do this' and
then they use the justification that
'you know grubs cause
areas that are soft in the in the lawn
to risk
a student having a sprained ankle or
meaning you know
not being able to run on an even playing
field'. But when we get the county health
department involved, it's not supported, so
again we're working
with those tools that we have
such as they are and we're saying... you
know, don't just go out there and decide
you're going to use
emergency provisions to get your
your application on your playing fields.
Let's see pest management.  I want to
put a plug in for the DEC
website. They have a terrific website
with tons of resources.
I'm regularly referring people to
that website. They define... they have an
actual definition of
'what is a pesticide' 
per regulation. It's in their regulation.
It defines
any substance or mixture of substances
intended for preventing, destroying,
repelling,
or mitigating any insects, rodents,
fungi, weeds, or other
plants or animal life, or viruses--
except viruses on or in living humans or
other animals. I was noting that as i was
writing this
in that COVID is a virus that lives
in humans so that's excluded from this
definition which DEC
shall declare to be a pest. So they keep,
they're the keeper of this list along
with
the national 
Environmental Conservation and
Department of health.
So they define what's
classified as an insecticide, a
rodenticide, a fungicide, and a herbicide,
and you can go on to their
website to see the
list of allowable chemicals.
The section of part 155 statute
that was inserted in the summer of 2001
added this requirement for neighbor
notification so that's when this
came to be a real requirement.
There's many districts that still call
and aren't aware,
and again i chalk it up to new staff
that hasn't been properly trained.
I'm going to share that at
the end of the presentation so I don't
mess up my
powerpoint slides, but I do have a 14 page guidance document
that we've just
brushed up and made sure that the links
are all still good.
I think I did that wrong.
So school year notifications-- I want
to make sure to
cover what could probably back up, but
the school year notifications at the
beginning of each school year: 48 hour
registry notification protocol,
the emergency application protocol, and
the pesticide application
summary reports. And the same routine has
to be
that's what's going on. I'm doing this
okay so the timings are probably messed
up now.
I'm realizing I just leaned on my screen.
Same is true for summer school. You've got to
do the same
if you have a summer school beginning of
the summer school period. 
Summer school 48 hour registry and the
emergence of any emergency application
protocols that are done
during that summer school period.
The green ribbon school program. I want
to--
just
another resource is the U.S. Department of
Education.
They have this awards
program. They're the proponent of the
awards program
began in 2012 with the school award. 2013
they added a district
sustainability award. 2014 they added a
director's award and 2015,
they included a post-secondary
sustainability award to honor
higher education institutions.
So the Green Ribbon Schools program
encourages schools to adopt a broad
approach
for cost saving, health-promoting
performance enhancing sustainability
practices
in the area of their three pillars and
eight elements.
So that's a that's another good resource
to try and get people to understand
what's out there as research
resources to help bring the whole
community on board with
"let's not grab the pesticides."  That's the
first
step, so they,
you know, there's again lots of places on
our website on the green ribbons
schools website. Lots of 
initiatives that make good sense and we
encourage the community to adopt
the sustainability approaches that are
shown
in those locations.
And finally,
because we're working currently
as hard as we are during this Covid
19
emergency, I thought I'd just put this
last slide in.
We're trying to keep things as normal-
seeming as we can,
so I can't really wrap up before
touching
on this topic.
There's a sampling. This slide shows
you a sampling of some of the guidelines
that were recently published in the
145 page reopening guidance document
that New York State
posted on their website. Again, they
are
working in collaboration with Department
of Health and the CDC
to try and keep out in front of
everybody. These are the things we're
hearing.
We don't know very much; we know what we
know at this point. We keep learning
stuff  each day.
I pulled out some of the excerpts from
that 145 pages that has to do
with facilities-- with the maintenance
and operations of facilities--
and with potentially... substances coming
into the schools that
we should not just be opening the doors
and say 'okay, whatever we need to throw
at it... come on let's
throw it all at at this...' There's...
we're busily working to answer people's
questions even though we don't
have many of the answers ourselves. We're
doing our best to, you know, hold steady,
keep calm, and advise districts on how
they can,
you know, adopt best practices.
Regulations are not being suspended
during this time. Schools still need to
be healthy
and safe, and students, when present, still
need to be protected.
We still need to practice emergency
drills. We still need to
make sure that kids have access to fresh
air, clean drinking water.
and all the basic things that have
always been true in the schools.
Things are not the same this year as
they were last year,
and we don't know what next year is
going to look like.
We want to offer encouragement and
support
to all of the various communities across
New York State that we work with,
and hopefully we can serve as a resource
to you and your teams.
What questions do you have for me?
(Fred Koebel) Daryl,  this is Fred Koebel.
Did I hear you correctly? Are you saying
a school district needs to
to ask permission from the county
department of health before it can apply
a pesticide?
(Daryl A) What we say is, we want you to work
together with your local health
department.
That's how the regulation is written
when you look at them...(Fred K) No and if
you go back to that slide it says or in
the case of a school district
the board of education. So the authority
having jurisdiction for for school
grounds is the board of education not
the county health department. (Daryl A)
So i did say that in the beginning we
leave the districts to run their affairs
as they see fit.
I guess the point of my including that
in the slide is that
you do well to get everybody on board.
That's the best approach is to take a
team approach to this. Make sure that you
don't have anybody
that's gonna disagree that you have good
grounds, that you're solid
in your understanding of why you're
declaring the emergency.
And so it's 
it's a recommendation and it is written
into the language of the
of the ...of that 155. (Fred K)
is the school board. (Daryl A) They are the
authority,
yes, you're correct. We also
uh ask you to work with your local
county health department. (Fred K)
But that's not in regulation that's all
i'm trying to make clear.
(Daryl A) Okay yeah thank you for that
clarification. (Joellen L)
It is in regulation for uh private
schools,
so but but it does sound like it's a
good best management practice.
So um any other questions we're going to
defer
to the panel discussion and we are going
to
keep moving along. So next up
is Claire Barnett. She's the founder and
executive director of the Healthy
Schools Network.
The network serves as a voice for
children's health, environmental health
at school
by advancing a comprehensive policy
agenda fostering state and local
environmental health coalitions across
the country
and securing landmark reforms in states
and and federal
governments. She's just...her focus to
children's environmental health in the
aftermath of her own child's pesticide
exposure at school.
So um Claire, let us get your
presentation
up and I think Daryl, you need to stop
sharing before
Claire. (Daryl) Oh thank you,
okay I.. let's see.
Got it? (Claire B) Yes okay. (Joellen) 
Okay just really quickly, I saw that
there's a request for a bathroom break
and we do
have a break that is in
the agenda to happen at uh
10 50
yes 10 50.
No i'm sorry 11 o'clock.
But you can hang on for 40 more minutes.
Okay, Claire go ahead.  (Claire Barnett)
Great. Uh thank you. Were you going to
introduce me?
(Joellen)I did already Claire. (Claire) Okay
um let me  back up here.
So, pesticides in schools in New York
State. Where have we've been and where are
we going
and I'm going to spend a little bit of
time talking about the pandemic with
respect to
antimicrobial pesticides, otherwise known
as disinfectants. I
have one or two slides there. The first
thing I want to call your attention to
is the five of the pictures of
five-year-olds this is a
interesting piece of peer-reviewed
published literature
that was done, I think,  in 1998 and
appeared in
Environmental Health Perspectives which
is the
monthly journal of the National
Institutes of Environmental Health
Perspectives.
On the left,  typical
drawings done by children. It's called
'draw a child test' which is a common
psych test used. A five-year-old with
sustained
pesticide exposures--because of where
they were living, they were in an
agricultural valley-- and on the right is
'draw a person test' by a five-year-old
not living in the valley in you know
open-air
horse country who did not have sustained
exposures.
There are quite a few differences
between the two populations in terms of
finding gross motor skills
memory attention and it's really
important to understand
what some pesticides can do. Now this was
done in 1998.
It can happen anytime, anywhere. It's
important to understand that.
So let's talk about children first of
all.
Children are not just little adults and
I think all of us
know that but sometimes we have to think
about it in very specific
terms. Children are especially vulnerable
to environmental health hazards because
they're still developing. They have a
long shelf life.
They eat and drink and breathe more per
pound of body weight
than adults do. That means their intake
of anything that's in the air, food, or
water, is going to be greater.
They're closer to, or on the floor or
ground, and that means that some
hazard exposures are going to be like
heavy metals and pesticides tracked in
are going to be up at the floor or on
the ground level.
Children have hand-to-mouth behaviors
meaning they're going to ingest things
that adults might not otherwise.
I also want to note that hand-to-mouth
behaviors is something that can persist
in developing children who have severe
developmental disabilities into their-- in
fact into--their twenties.
Children also can't identify hazards or
even articulate what their exposures are.
So just as children are not just little
adults,
we don't think that schools are little
offices so keep that in mind children
are not little adults
and schools are not just little offices.
In fact,
98 of all the occupants of public
schools are women and children.
And those are two subsets of the general
population who are more vulnerable than
other people.
Schools themselves are four times more
densely occupied than offices are.
They may have multiple processes and
chemical uses
all in one facility... sometimes sharing
one ventilation system.
If in fact there's a ventilation system.
Decades of poor facility management
on little oversight and deferred repairs
are common.
This is not and I want to say now, this
is not specific to New York State or New
York City.
These are uh general findings across the
U.S., across all schools
and that's been worn out by US G A O
studies and the National Center for Ed
Statistics. it's NCES. It's a separate
unit inside the Department of Education.
There was ...I'll bring to your attention,
there was a new G A O report on
schools and operating systems and that
came out in the beginning of June this
year and one of the findings--
in a pandemic era--was 36 000 schools
reported they needed to update the
ventilation systems and those were just
the schools that
actually had mechanical ventilation
systems.
OSHA applies to all private employers. And
New York
happens to be one of the states where the state OSHA plan also
applies to public employees.
And there are 24 states like that. The
reality
according to GAO and again NCES is that
the poorest children
always have the schools in the worst
condition. In part that's because of
local property tax
differentials and disparities. So if you
rely on local property taxes to
rebuild and fund bond acts and so forth,
you're going to have the poorest schools
that are going to be in the worst
condition.
Even with an overlay of state aid
that's still true in New York state.
There are no agencies at the federal,
state, or local level, that record, report
or investigate, risk to children or
suspected exposures.
In terms of pests and pesticides
specifically,
pests and pesticides are actually
related
in the EPA literature and other
literature to other things happening
in schools. They're certainly related
to indoor air problems like mold and
moisture.
They're related to asthma and allergy
triggers to chemical use and chemical
storage
and to sanitation. So there are a lot of
connecting points here in terms of
managing
school facilities. We also recognize that
neglected maintenance
and repair can encourage pests as well
as release legacy toxic like lead and
pcbs and asbestos.
The renovation or expansion projects of
occupied schools are a great thing to
have happen, but you also have to make
sure you're not creating while you're in
the middle of the project.
You're not creating new openings for
pests to enter the building and
get themselves nested into the new walls.
And with that, with this slide, I want to
raise a question for the panel to talk
about later on.
I think anticipating the coming school
year, I think
everybody that we've talked to
anticipates school
openings and closings and openings and
closing. It's going to be a bumpy
time, at least to start, and one of the
things to think about is what schools
can do with their custodial and
maintenance staff
during a closure time. It's always easier
to work on a building when nobody's in
it and if it's closed you've got a great
opportunity to do some work.
So looking at a greater context here
about what's been going on
nationally a little bit a lot of work on
pesticides really began with Silent
Spring, a publication by an author Rachel
Carson that came out
all the way back in 1962. And
the finding of DDT in eagle's eggs and
decline of the species and so forth and
making some connections to human health.
A next big document that was highly
influential is a report called
Pesticides in the Diets of Children. It
was put out by the National Academies of
Science and Medicine, The National
Research Council in 1993
and it's one of the reports that called
for
what's called the 10x factor when you're
looking at being health protective for
children
you need to multiply by 10
divide by 10. Another big moment which
Daryl just mentioned was the New York
State Advisory Committee on the
Environmental Equality of Schools
convened by the Board of Regents in 1993
and they reported out in 94 nd in
February of 1995,
they adopted not only the guiding
principles of that report--
every child has a right to
environmentally safe healthy schools
cleaning good repair --which i thought was
really exciting until I realized how
hard that was going to be.
But um,
they adopted some of the action items.
There were actually 62
different action items. Some were adopted
and some were not.
So from 1995 to today, which is a long
time 25 years, not all of that report has
been acted on.
their large--possibly a third of it--has
not taken
up and put into effect. It did call for
IPM in schools taking a least toxic
approach.
That wound up in Commissioner's
regulations.
The next big event that came through
actually was it later on in the same
year--I think it was in the fall of 1995--
was a US G A O report called Condition of
America Schools.
It was a broad survey look at the
conditions of America's public school
facilities.
It's really the first and the only such
that has been done.
It was an incredibly valuable report.
I know a lot of us were hoping the GAO
report that came out in June would be 
identical to that it's not but it covers
a lot of the same territory.
And then as Daryl mentioned, we have the
pesticide reporting law, the prior notice
and the neighbor
notification laws, and pesticide..uh,
the prohibition on grounds of schools
and daycare centers.
All very valuable steps in prevention.
But let's take a look exactly at what
the state board of regents actions
called for and let's think about that in
terms of what's been accomplished.
In that  report,
the environmental quality of schools
proposal three was to improve school
pest management programs as follows:
You must adopt and publicize IPM
policies and practices. That was local
schools must adopt
and publicize. Local schools shall select
practices to minimize exposure,
post warning signs, provide
pre-notification,
have a certified applicator on site
supervising or
applying, providing IPM training to
personnel,
maintain and make available records of
application. I  think a number of these
things are already in place,
maybe not quite as completely as the
regents at
or the committee had anticipated.
Moving on a little bit into the pandemic
era, this is also pest control.
Disinfectants are in fact antimicrobial
pesticides
registered for effectiveness by EPA
under FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide,
Fungicide, Rodenticide Act. Going back a little bit on
cleaning and disinfecting,
the state green cleaning law covers all
public and private schools in New York
State,
and executive order covers state
agencies and state facilities.
In 2010, the New York state enhanced
green cleaning guidance to reduce the
spread of
communicable diseases came out. It's a
training manual. It is terrific, it was
terrific in 2010.
It is still terrific today, and i would
recommend it to anybody who's uh
considering what to do about
communicable disease we're all
too familiar with right now. In February
2020, the New York State Center for
School Health
hosted CDC's-- the Federal Center for
Disease Control and Prevention--
guidance which recommended, I'm afraid to
say--the American Chemistry Council's
list of emerging disinfectants
which meant they had not been fully they
were not necessarily registered by EPA.
And they also posted CDC's inaccurate
disinfecting recipe for bleach products.
To best of my knowledge that misleading
guidance still exists
on the New York State Center for School
Health website and we have asked to have
it taken down several times.
It is important to understand that DEC,
New York State DEC
has its own list of approved
disinfectants that can be used
in New York State. And it posted
a  modified list of that... it's had a
list for a long time.
Many of those disinfectants on the
original list were effective against the
coronavirus because the coronavirus
has been along,
around for a long time and basically it
can be deactivated by soap and water and
quite a good number of ordinary
disinfecting products.
In March of 2020 US EPA recently at
least
what it calls now its N list of
disinfectants registered to deactivate
the SARS Cov2,
and then it also rapidly expanded the
N list.
I think there are some people taking
a hard look at that
heavily expanded N list, and I hope New
York State
did that before they published their own
list.
In March of 2020, shortly after EPA
published,
we have a long working relationship with
a group called the Responsible
Purchasing Network
which is a nonprofit.org
and the Responsible Purchasing Network
has done extensive consulting work with
New York State DEC,
New York State Office of General
Services, California offices, Washington,
Oregon, Maryland. They're well known
working with
states and municipalities on green
procurement programs.
So, RPN co-published and culled a list of
safer disinfectants with
us based on their prior work going back
to 2012
where they had looked at safer
disinfectants that could be used
to reduce asthma rates in child
care for the city of San Francisco. So
with the two you know two years looking
at disinfectants with the city of
San Francisco led them to create a major
list of safer disinfectants
on a wide range of target organisms and
they brought that work forward
and looked at the EPA N list so i'm
hoping
all of this has keeps moving forward.
Finally in July this year,
uh towards the end of July,  uh i believe
concurrently with the
Governor releasing the New York State
Department of Health
guidelines for requirements for schools
on reopening. New York State DEC
published its covid19
antimicrobial pesticides lease list
which was called from the EPA
N list. There's a lot of very heavy
duty work going on here as you can see.
The disinfectants being used and
sometimes
misused or overused are really a very
serious issue.
And I'd like these certainly considered
under
pest control of some sort although the
virus is not a living organism.
So some of the things that we're
concerned about here and we actually
have some recommend, you know, some
preliminary recommendations about
again open for discussion. We want the
center for school health to delete the
American Chemistry Council's list of
Disinfectants. It shouldn't be there.
Delete and Correct CDC's recipe for
bleach disinfectants.
What that means is there are a half a
dozen different bleach
products on the N list that EPA
publishes.
They have different strengths, different
dilutions, different dwell times, for
the disinfectant to sit on a clean
surface but
CDC only provides one recipe and
obviously one recipe can't fit all.
We think it would be important for the
center to flag those errors and issue a
priority memo to the field and make sure
everybody has a link to the New York
State list of SARS CoV2 disinfectants.
 Let's clean that up before it goes
too far.
We also would like the state agencies
including the Attorney General's office
to track and publicize false marketing
claims
and certainly cite the manufacturers and
the vendors who are touting ineffective
products and ineffective processes.
For New York State health we would love
to see a hotline for parents and
personnel
tracking for children regarding
infections and suspected
disinfectant exposures. We'd like them to
log and investigate complaints,
to generate a report to the public,
conduct on-site investigation of
19 outbreaks associated with child care
based transmission,
and facilities written protocols. Now
every school facility
in the state, public and private, at some
point will have
an approved protocol across a number of
different things for cleaning and
disinfecting,
distancing, um and so forth,
according to the governor's
office.
If it's been approved and you're still
encountering
uh school-based transmissions,
that's a really interesting research
question. It's not
that the school has done anything wrong
necessarily, they may be following every
single protocol there is,
but it may be a community transmission
that's taking place.
Anyway one way or another you have to
look at it and it will be really
important to know
that the either the school or the child
care center is following
what it said it would do. And so you have
some baseline measure
from facility to facility to facility and
who's getting transmissions and who is
not.
We're really appreciative of the Cornell
IPM program in schools and daycare
centers. A huge amount of wonderful
information
as well as the State Education
Department Office of Facilities planning
that we've
been fans of for a very very long time. I
think other people across the country
are as well.
So some of the resources we suggest,
besides the ones
in New York, are EPA's healthy schools
programs that cover a wide range of
connected issues for
indoor environments a report done in the
spring of 2017 by the harvard T. H. Chan
School of Public Health. It is a
recap
of the peer-reviewed literature on how
school buildings
affect children's health, thinking, and
learning. It's an easy read
and it's absolutely terrific. Read it
once a week and quote it twice.
We do an indicator report towards
healthy schools reducing risk to
children.
Covers state by state comparisons of
policies in place.
We know at the time that we did that one
there were currently 26 states
that had adopted a least toxic approach
to pesticides in schools as New York has.
And we feel strongly that particularly
in the covid
era, that we need environmental public
health systems for children at with risk
or with exposures in schools.
That's in fact a public health policy
statement adopted by the American Public
Health Association
and contributed to by NACCHO,
and other organizations as well.
And of course we have our own
supplies and
fact sheets and training materials.
And here's how you reach us with an
information referral clearinghouse.
We do awards. We do national healthy
schools day every year,
and right now we're organizing back to
school day of advocacy
around what uh what to look for when a
school is
is reopened and it's heavily based on
what New York is already doing.
We've been honored by quite a few awards
in the past and there's just a short
list of them there.
Many of them from U.S. EPA. Some of them
in public health, some of them
environment.
I really appreciate your time, Lynn and
thanks to my so much to everybody at
Cornell for putting this panel together.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
(Joellen L) Well thank you very much, Claire. That was
that was great.
So, by popular demand we're actually
going to move our break up
and we're going to take 15 minutes now
and when we return,
we will hear from Fred Koebel, and we will
immediately go into our panel discussion
from there.
So if you could all please be back in
your seats by 10:55, we will get going and we'll be able
to
finish up around 12 o'clock. Uh, enjoy!
(Joellen L) Well, let me let me just give you a brief
introduction so welcome back everybody
um what seemed to be a well needed a
break.
Today, right now, we're going to hear
from Fred Koebel, who is the Director of
Facilities.
He's been a director for over 23
years for serving 
West Islip and now Port Jefferson school
district.
During his career he has implemented IPM
programs online, work order systems,
environmentally preferable cleaning
programs, and organic turf maintenance
programs.
He's a former chairman of the School
Facilities Management Institute,
a past president of the New York State
School Facilities Association,
and now serves as their legislative
director.
So welcome, Fred, uh we're happy to hear
about your experiences.
Take it away. (Fred Koebel) Thank you, Joellen. Well
hello everybody um since you know, you
probably can't see me, I thought i'd
share a picture one is from 2007. One
one is how I look today. Um and that's
the reality of where we are right now in
schools.
And we're working hard to create, you
know,  a safe place to open schools
next month.
so ipm in schools um
i think you know like anything in school
It's a process. It's a
journey.
And it's educational opportunities. So,
and
I started in February in 1997 and when i
first arrived back then, at West...
West Islip schools, you know, they were
doing
weekly treatments of the building. So uh
you know, somebody would come and
spray the cafeteria and
the kitchen every week, and you know
they were doing preventive sprayings,
They were doing weed applications. They
had you know what many
homeowners had. You know- the Scotts four
season program. You do
this bag now and you do this bag, then
you do this bag, you do this bag for the
turf.
Um, as people still say today, 'none of this green
stuff'. You know, so um
 that was the background that you
started against. You know one of the
things about schools too is the jobs we
do...
everybody's taking care of insects in
their home.
Everybody's taking care of their lawn so
everybody thinks they can do the job.
So we're coming from a base where
everybody feels they're an expert in
what we do.
And if I push the right computer you'll
see the next screen.
You know? And why does it take a
while to change and why
do schools not be really open to change?
And i think
I'll tell you a story about a guy named
Larry Levine who was a roofing
contractor. And you're wondering what
does that have to do with IPM, but
it'll all make sense in the end. I was a
young project manager, still in the
private sector,
and I met Larry Levine who was um
one of the principals of a 90 year old
family-owned commercial roofing company.
Had been around for,
you know, a long, long time and we're up
on the roof of a building
and we're looking at this badly worn
roof surface and
I said to him, 'Larry, I don't recognize
this material'.
And he says to me 'well Fred, you wouldn't
recognize this material. You're much too
young.
They don't use it anymore because it
causes cancer'.
And I said to him 'well, what is it?' He
goes 'Well it's coal tar pitch'.
I said 'oh'. He goes 'it was a great roofing
material. Lasted a long time and',  he goes
...'but you know, now it's being phased out'.
He was all 'wait,
let me correct myself. they still use it
in municipal contracting'.
And again, being young and inexperienced,
I looked at Larry and said 'Larry, if it
causes cancer why would they still use
it in municipal contracting?'
And Larry's response to me was 'you've
got to understand. Municipal spec writing...
somebody's sitting in an office and
saying everybody's been happy with this
for the last 30 years... I'm not going to
be the guy to change it'.
And so that's the thing we need to fight
back, and
we need to overcome in the school
environment. Okay?
School work is a dilemma. They have many
bosses. They have
the principal. They have the teachers.
They have the students. They have the
parents.
They have the people who use their
building-- the CYO whatever--on whatever
weekday night.
They have to keep all those people happy,
and they all have
divergent interests and divergent
needs,
so it's a challenge, okay? And if they're
successfully keeping everybody happy, you
come in and say
I'd like to change this... all those
cleaning products you've been using?
I'd like to take them away and give you
something else.
The way you've been maintaining your
your fields? I'd like to change the way
you're doing that,
okay? It's a scary situation and that's
why it's a process and that's why it's
an educational experience.
So the start of this journey, you know, we
came out and we said we're going to stop
routine spraying in the structures.
And what did we hear back? What people...
what did people hear me say?
'We're going to have bugs, you know, we're
going to scout fields before applying
anything.
And i heard from the athletic
communities...'we're gonna have bad hops,
bald fields, and weeds'
Um, we need to control food in the
classroom.
'You know, you're against mom and apple
pie you know. Of course we're gonna have
cupcakes and of course we're gonna have,
you know, snack time. And
you know, 'you can help buy'.
And you want to do work and the classic
example of this, you know...
Again I was  in a prior school
district and I went to the athletic
coaches and said, 'listen you can really
help this way--
end of every practice you line your
athletes up from
sideline to sideline, walk the length of
your field and just
put replace your divots. Pat them back
down. And really at the time we were
focusing on lacrosse--
which for those of you who aren't
familiar with the game...it's 22 people
with shovels going around digging up
your field.
And just 'but you guys have...you've got
all these athletes. It'll take you five
minutes and you'll really do
a wealth of good for the field. Um I was
told 'I can't
ask my athletes to do that' and then
subsequently that coach won the state
championship three years in a row. I
don't think i was allowed to talk to him
after that.
So those are some of the things we've
got to try and educate people as to
why these things make a difference. As to
why that little bit of help will work
and that's a process that, you know, in my
experience has been going on since I
started in 1997.
You know? And then of course, um you know,
Green Seal came in 
and I know it's the green cleaning
act and everything, but I really would
wish people start using the term
Environmentally Preferable,
um because, let's face it, there are lots
of things that claim to be green that
aren't.
There are lots of things just
environmentally preferable cleaning
products, environmentally powerful IPM.
Those type of terms.
But you know people, you know, and even
right now
as we're dealing with COVID 19, well we're
not worried about being green, we want to
make sure we take care of this virus.
So again we've got to find the
opportunities to educate people
and that's what we're talking about--
teaching moments. 
You know, grabbing your success stories
um, so you know... teaching moments.
Talking about food in the classroom, I
had a principal once come to me,
'you know we've got to do something about
these,
these mice'.  I said 'well, we gotta deal
with the food in the classroom'. 'Oh, there
must be something else you can do'.
You know? And i wasn't gonna get rid of
all the food. I was gonna, I said 'what
you've gotta do is, you gotta make sure
when they have the snack it's cleaned up.
When they store the snacks, they're in
sealed containers.
That, the rodents can't get into. Um,
you know Ii've done presentations
at board meetings and to PTAs and all
else you know...
You know, rodents and insects are just
like us. They're looking for a warm place
with food and water
and a place to procreate and when we
make the school an easy
avenue to do that they're going to be
there. And so if we can remove the food
if we can remove the routes of entry,
we can make a difference. 
You know the other thing too, is when we
talk about routes of entry and we talk
about use of pesticides.
In my prior district we'd get
problem with termites, and when I say
problems...they'd swarm.
Um, we would treat them by, with just
with hot water, you know just go around
swabbing down hot water, and they...
and that would kill them. But we'd also,
every time we go in,
look at the classroom, say how did they
get in there?  Inevitably there was a
heating line coming out of the floor...
something else.  So we would caulk that
up.
Um, but we got the teachers to learn that
you know the treatment-- if we 
brought  in an applicator, it was going to
be much worse
than what we did, and and you know... by
talking and explaining it...
that worked. We got them to understand if
you do this, we can get this done.
And you know...and it's that persistence
and it's looking for the opportunity.
You know, uh one of the questions you
know,
and I, you know, hear people talking
about facilities and everything. One of the questions to ask
your community is 'are you giving the
necessary staffing and funding
to achieve the outcome?' One of the
things right now, you know,
if you're if you're a parent in a school
district, how much did you increase your
custodial staff to deal with
the cleaning of the buildings and and
the procedures you're putting in place
in your plan for COVID 19?
Okay did we increase our staff? Did we
give additional funding to buy
maybe new equipment? Maybe new materials?
You know, and when I talk about those
those educational opportunities,
I've had an ongoing dialogue with my
board of education
about the use of ....  of pesticides
on playing fields. Um,
And I can tell you, there's been just two
instances where we've used them
and and of those will go away
shortly.
We used it to control 
poison ivy generally on playing fields
and we've used it to control
weeds growing out from under the rubber
surface of the track, because one of the
things we found is, if we pulled them
manually we sometimes damaged the track.
And the other thing we used it for was
an infestation of grubs,
and in each of those cases though, there
was a process.
For the track, we first tried, you know,
the different herbicides that have
come out on the market...things like
Burnout and Clove oil and all those
things--
and we documented the results we were
achieving--and that we didn't really get
the kill
even with multiple applications. Okay? So
then I go to the board and said 'here's
what we did first.
We tried all these more preferable
products. but they're not achieving what
we need.
We're asking, can we spray, you know, a
herbicide
just on this particular area... the
perimeter of the track. And we would post
the property well in advance letting
people know
on these days we're going to be doing
this-- the track will be closed while
we're doing it. Once it dries, you can
come back on.
Now, because of that ongoing conversation,
because of the growing concern about
products like roundup and all,
I was able to secure my budget money to
buy
a machine that will kill it. It uses hot
water and detergent. Detergent is really
a surfactant
and it'll kill the weeds. Now, again we
didn't just say, 'okay
you're selling this and it's going to
work', we made the vendor lend us the
machine for weeks at a time
through two different growing seasons
and we got, we got, good results.
And we bought that machine. Now I will
tell you that machine is about twenty
six thousand dollars
okay?  So it's not something.. everything go
out and buy tomorrow, but because of that
we will...we phased out using
herbicides to get rid of weeds and
...poison ivy. Um, but you've got to
have support of the community. You've got
to have support of the board of
education. You have to have that funding
you know, so that's a success story but
it's part of that ongoing dialogue.
The other... the other case I just want to
highlight... an example of how you approach
this
the grubs. We  scouted the fields
several seasons in a row and we ...
noticed grubs starting to appear, but we
weren't getting significant damage, so we
changed our watering habits a little bit.
We changed the way we fed it with
fertilizer. We spoon fed it. We did
smaller, more frequent applications to
keep nutrients going to the root
structure
while it was under stress. But we
noticed
we went from the, you know we were...as we
did the survey
that each year the population was
growing and we're getting to a point now
where we're starting to get birds
picking at it. We were having problems,
then we looked at it and ...you know,
I mean pre-emergent products are
not something we would normally even
talk about in an IPM situation,
but when we step back and with the help
of folks from Cornell,
um we came up with a plan, because the
product we could put down-- pre-emergent--
had two things going for it. It was on
the scale of...
it was exponentially less toxic on
that then...the product we could
put out post-emergent.
And it was also...it went down at a
time when nobody would be on the fields.
So again, we did our research. We showed
the progression after the scouting
and then we were able to go to the
community and we go to the board of
education and say,
'hey this... this is something we
can do here.
This is how we can do it. We can do it
where we can close the field and keep
children off.
And we can do it with a less toxic
product. So
that worked and it kicked back the
...with one application we kicked back
the
... the grubs. So those are the type
of stories you have to have. Those are
the type of conversations and those...
that's the education you need to work on.
Major changes in our industry came along
Governor Pataki's executive order and
then... and the commissioner's regulations. I remember the day in
in his State of the State address when
Governor Pataki said
you know, 'and I want to recognize Dierdre
Imus for helping bring this to our
attention', and
boom, things were moving. Bbut
you know, when we're doing that again
right away, people are upset
we're going to start using these green
products. 'What's wrong with what we've
been using?' We want to make sure we don't...'
you know 'we want it to be healthy for
our kids'. And they're that...
that community is perceiving healthy as
'we've killed every virus, every germ,
everything'. They're not perceiving the
fact that when you're using
a disinfectant, it's a pesticide you know?
Do we need,
you know...what level do we need to be?
They weren't understanding that, you know,
what good a thorough cleaning is going to
take care of most of the
problems in the classroom. You
know right now, with COVID 19, you know,
I've heard it more than once, but 'we're
not going to worry about being green'.
We're going to make sure we take care of
this. And again those are the
opportunities to step up and say 'okay,
but here's what you need to consider...
Here's the decision-making process we're
talking about.
Then we had to save playing fields
legislation.
And like I said, um, we were a little bit
ahead of the curve on that. We were doing
things before that.
But you know it's... it's
getting
your staff comfortable with changing the
way they do things. Because again,
they've had everybody happy and now
you're saying well we're going to change
it.
You know... and it's getting to understand
we're going to do more frequent seeding.
We're going to overseed. We're going to
...we're going to ...to, you know,
limit
some, some, other things. But again, for
those of you, when you look at your
community,
how much are your fields used? Okay? My
prior district...
there was a large community youth
soccer league.
There was a large community youth
lacrosse league.
And there was a large community little
league.
And basically our athletic fields were
used from the...
through... for the school teams, when they
got off the field...
Seven days a week those fields were
booked solid. 
Matter of fact, I remember one time
having to take a board of education
member around the district to show him
'no. there is no other place to put people'.
And he came back to the next meeting
and said 'no, he's right. There's no other
place to put people'.
Okay, but you know what... I don't care
who you are. or what your expertise is, if
there's people
playing on those things hour after hour
after hour,
um, you're not gonna... you're gonna have
stress and you're gonna have difficulty
maintaining turf in all the areas.
So again, when you look at your 
school district, how much funding are
they getting to take care of the field?
Are they getting...do they have irrigation?
And
do they have adequate staff? And how much
use are the fields getting? Those are
things to think about and things to talk
about.
And that journey continues okay?
And some things are slow to change you
know. That 'oh there must be something
else you can do' kind of thing...
You know 'I don't want to change what
we're doing. Let's just keep going.' You
take care of it in the background... you
know...
do what you've got to do.
Some of these people, some of these
organizations, you know, when you when you...
they have allies
you know... they're ...I
mean again in
a previous district, you know, 
the president of the soccer association
you know had the ear of  board members. ' Oh
Fred, why are you giving them such a hard
time? Oh Fred'. You know?
Well, because and that's when you have to
have your information in line and that's
when you have to be able to share it
and say this is what the result is of
what they're doing.
Um you know COVID 19
is bringing changes again, you know,
people are stressed. People are worried.
People are sending their children
back to school. Staff is worried about
coming back in the environment
you know. But again, you know, using...
looking at an IPM approach, this social
distancing is
is much better than than... you know?
I mean, I've seen suggestions that
you put spray tunnels as people into the
room,
and the conversation I had on that
one was well, this is primarily a
respiratory
spread... droplets you know... when you
cough and sneeze, I said, so unless we can
clean their lungs as they go through
this tunnel, I don't know how much good
we're getting out of the...
you know... these spray tunnels. 'oh i get it
now', you know? So
again, we've got to have conversations. We've
got to have dialogue. We've got to talk to
each other and bring everybody along
together.
Public use is still a big problem in
many areas.
Funding again. It's expensive equipment.
Costs money.
Are we maintaining equipment or
providing, you know?
Um one of... you know when I heard
Lynn earlier on in his presentation talk
about aerating,
one of the reasons I didn't do
aerating in 1997, is I didn't know the
machine. I  couldn't get the funding to
buy it.
You know, we were, we were doing what
we were doing.
You know. Staffing. 
I've been in, you know, districts where
they were adding sports. They were
adding,
you know ,new teams, new competitions.
Well, are we getting more people?
Are we getting more help? I had an
experience where
we were adding in a large bond issue.
We were adding
on to every single building in the
district and during the bond
presentation,
and in our planning process, I said 'we're
going to need an additional custodian in
every building to handle this additional
square footage',
and when the first two buildings came
online, I got two more custodians.
When the next four buildings came online,
I got four
custodians total. They said 'we're gonna
have a half for each building',
you know, and it started going down from
there. So
you know there are
standards of how many, how much a custodian
can clean.
We need to be aware. We need to
communicate that. I mean a good rule of
thumb
is a custodian at night shouldn't be
cleaning more than 20 000 square feet.
You know? How many square feet are
custodians cleaning? That's going to
affect what they do,
you know? Do we have enough grounds folks
to cut the grass and maintain the
grass?
And again, we keep looking for those
teachable moments. We keep looking for
those conversations. We keep looking for
those opportunities
to educate people.  One that's been a
recent..
you know... And again, working with Joellen
and with with Jody
Gangloff-Kaufman... grubs. Every year
I'll get that call, 'My child came home',  I'm sorry--not
grubs...ticks.  'My child came home', and  ...not even
'came home and I found a tick on my child'.
The assumption always is that it had
to come from our playing fields. It
couldn't come from their backyard. A I
...I work... Port Jefferson is on the
north shore of Long Island for those of
you don't know. It...
um it is a ...
There's a lot of large wooded areas
around. We are
overrun with deer because there's no
hunting. There's no...
I will have deer feeding outside my
window, which is in my office... on the...
Our administration buildings are on the
grounds of an elementary school.
They'll be feeding on the front lawn of
the elementary school.
You know? We'll see them on the athletic
fields um so...
What we've done every time we start
to get those calls, is we'll take out our
drag mats and we'll drag the field and
do a survey and we'll say you know what?
We came up with three ticks on this
field.
I don't know that it's our field...and
I don't know that we're going to get
crazy and react to three ticks on
a football field you know?  Or an area
across the street. We have, you know,
two soccer fields,  but again that's
information and that's teachable moments
and that's giving us the opportunity to
share information
and help with it.  And you know...
the other thing in that journey is
if you're a school facility director,
strike when the iron's hot okay? There
was that concern
about, you know, herbicides in our
district, and that machine was there
and the iron was hot. I could get that
funding and we could get that purchased
and we're going to have that in here in
a few weeks and it really does do a nice
job. And we've been very pleased with it.
So, I mean, I think the thing to
understand
and, like my intro said from Joellen,
I was the president of our state
association. The School Facilities
Management Institute is our educational
501c3 arm of the School Facilities
Association.
I'm still the Legislative Director. The
thing to understand is
everybody I know in that organization
wants to do the best job they can for
kids and staff.
The problem is they can't always get
everybody to understand that.
They can't always get the funding. They
can't always get the staffing,
okay? So I would say, if you are a parent,
if you are a community member, start the
conversation
with your school district, and say--and
your facility director-- 'what are we doing?
Why don't we do this?'
Okay? 'What could we do about this?' And
have a good dialogue
and come in calmly, and I think you'll be
very pleased with the results you'll see,
and things that will happen. Whoops. So
any questions? (Joellen) Thank you very much, Fred.
We actually did have one question,
and that was what grub product you use
for your pre-emergent.
(Fred) I don't remember.
It was uh because,
um I'd have to look back. Yeah it was, it
was several years ago.
Yeah. (Joellen L) I will make a pitch.
That the Cornell Turfgrass Program
has created a specific website for
school playing fields and there is a lot
of information there about
dealing with different pest issues, but
more of a focus
on maintaining the field so that you
don't have those issues in the first
place.
(Fred) I will tell you this again, if you're a
facilities person, if you're a school
person,
 okay... Cornell is your expert for
more than five miles away.
You know, that was one of the things
that backed me. You know? We were able to, you know,  share here.
'I had this conversation with Cornell.
Here's the information they gave me.
Here's the you know ... here's
how we compared the two,
the two... products you know, and
and
their toxicity. Here's why we decided
we're recommending this'.
And having that information, you know,
coming from Cornell, it was
it was very very helpful.
(Joellen) Thank you, Fred
