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Funded Project

Funding Program: Working Groups

Project Title: North Central School IPM Working Group

Project Director (PD): Thomas Green [1]

Lead State: WI Lead Organization: IPM Institute of North America

Cooperating State(s): Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota

Undesignated Funding: $20,000

Start Date: Mar-01-2018 End Date: Feb-28-2019

Pests Involved: Pests in Urban Structures and Landscapes

Site/Commodity: Schools

Area of Emphasis: Urban structures, specifically schools

Summary: Students spend a major part of their time in school areas, including classrooms, gymnasiums and auditoriums. A school environment with pest and pesticide hazards can have a profound effect on students’ and school employees’ health in the short- and long-term. IPM in schools reduces pesticide use, residues and toxicity, and lowers the number of pest complaints. It is crucial that districts are informed about IPM practices and know how to train all staff involved in making a school’s pest management program effective. The goal of the North Central School IPM Working Group is to make schools healthier places with fewer pests and pesticides by facilitating the development and adoption of IPM solutions. The working group aims to achieve its goal by focusing on five objectives in 2018 – 2019. The group will collaborate with school employee organizations and associations in the region to increase adoption of the free Stop School Pests training program. The group will reach out to school districts in the region and work with stakeholders in Michigan, where school IPM training is required, to increase adoption of Stop School Pests training. School IPM resources, strategies and information will be shared in regular conference calls for the North Central School IPM Working Group and the National School IPM Joint Steering and Advisory Committee. News from both groups and other school IPM sources will be circulated in a monthly newsletter to a national network of school IPM parties. Objectives: 1. Promote IPM in schools of the region by further establishing the free school employee IPM training program Stop School Pests that was developed by the working group and other school IPM experts. Promote the training by working with organizations representing different school employee groups such as custodians or school nurses in each state of the North Central region of the US. Organizations to consider will include state School Business Officials Association chapters, the Educational Plant Managers Association, the Green Schools National Network and state school nurse networks, such as Wisconsin Association of School Nurses (WASN). Introduce Stop School Pests training to 50 new organizations in the region and develop nine collaborative relationships that result in their membership becoming aware of the training and generating new users for the online training courses. 2. Promote IPM in schools in the North Central region by introducing Stop School Pests to school districts. Identify the three largest school districts in each state of the North Central region and contact at least 50% of those to introduce the North Central Working Group, IPM training courses, raise awareness of IPM in schools and promote the training’s use, with a goal of ten new school districts using the training. 3. Coordinate with crucial stakeholders to integrate the Stop School Pests trainings into the state of Michigan’s school IPM training requirements to strengthen the requirement by adding scientific, up-to-date information on IPM from Stop School Pests training courses. Present the Stop School Pests to the school IPM training enforcement (Pesticide Section Manager) and a representative of the Michigan School Business Officials to introduce the training. Coordinate with an existing Michigan State IPM Project that works to offer an online-training option to ensure no efforts are duplicated. 4. Continue to coordinate monthly conference calls and other networking, coordination and information exchange opportunities for the North Central School IPM Working Group and the National Steering and Advisory Committees. Maintain website sections at https://ipminstitute.org/projects/school-ipm-2020/ and https://ipminstitute.org/projects/north-central-region-school-ipm-working-group/ for the national and regional group to host general information, priorities, resources, and project development. 5. Continue to create and send a monthly email newsletter that includes news from the region and highlights school IPM projects and new resources relevant to the school IPM community and features guest articles from practitioners. Create an editorial calendar based on newsletter reader feedback to ensure interesting and important content is included in the monthly newsletter.

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