Third Visit to Lincoln Public Schools

On Feb 2, in the midst of an icy, cold snow day, we conducted our third visit to our Lincoln demonstration school. Although the kids weren't at school, we had a great turnout of school staff and pest control representatives! First we spent some time talking about the recommendations we had sent after our second visit, then a little about IPM Star Certification. After a short meeting, we did a walkthrough of all the areas that we had discussed in the recommendations.

We were very impressed with the kitchen! Although some deep cleaning, especially of drains, is still needed, there were a lot of areas that showed great improvement. Upon looking at sticky traps, there were far less roaches and other pests then we had seen in the past. Areas that had needed sealing, such as the tray return area, had been caulked, and the bulletin board that had been the harborage for German cockroaches during our last visit had been removed. In addition, the kitchen office now has a "pest sighting" sheet where employees can report sightings and the pest management professional checks and signs off on it when he visits.

A new concern with the school was that we found brown recluse spiders in sticky traps in the boiler room and home ec storage room. We encouraged the head custodian/IPM coordinator to place new traps out to monitor the extent of the problem.

The school is doing a great job! As with OPS, we will give them updated recommendations that outline what still needs to be done to implement IPM in their school and school district. Some general recommendations for both districts are to create/maintain a pest log book, remove and discard pesticides from the school (preferable) or store them only in locked custodial cabinets, continue to monitor with sticky traps, maintain good sanitation practices, and install doorsweeps. Our hope is to have a Star Certification team evaluate both the OPS and LPS school districts at the end of this demonstration project.