LPS Second Visit

On Sept 23, Clyde, Barb and I began our second visit to the Lincoln demonstration school by meeting with the staff, which included the principal, operations manager, head custodian, director of food services, and two PMPs, including the technician who services the school. We discussed that we'd be checking traps set last time and visiting vulnerable areas. We also talked about the recordkeeping process they have in place. Currently, this school keeps a pest log in the custodial office, but they are likely going to make a second set of pest sighting sheets available in the main office to simplify the pest reporting process for staff.

After the short discussion, we made our way to visit the food storage and kitchen areas, home ec, staff lounge, boiler room, and custodial closets/offices.

Food storage was good about primarily using open metal shelves! They did have a few wooden pallets and lots of cardboard boxes, but the area was clean, neat, and dry. We recommended they just discard the pallets and reduce the cardboard.

The kitchen is a pest vulnerable area, as we have seen in visits to many other schools, and we did find traps with Orientals and Germans, as well as a German cockroach hiding behind a bulletin board! We gave them similar recommendations as OPS of deep cleaning everything (behind and beneath equipment, floors, drains, etc.), caulking around the bulletin boards, and setting out more traps to continue monitoring.

The staff lounge was in overall good shape...the traps primarily had incidentals but we had found some mouse droppings under a sink last time, so encouraged them to put out snap traps.

The Home ec room looked good...sinks were clean underneath with no storage of pesticide, and stoves, sinks, etc. were clean overall.


In the boiler room, we saw two live wolf spiders...as big as half my thumb! I got this great picture of one before Clyde started telling me it would jump on me. I wasn't sure whether to believe him, but I wasn't taking any chances :-) so I moved back and let someone perform some "mechanical" IPM on the spider with his shoe! We also saw some dead Orientals on the floor, a bag with pop cans, and various areas with debris and dirt. We encouraged the school to address an area of standing water near the water softener, especially since Orientals love and thrive on lots of moisture.

We looked at several custodial closets and with the exception of some clutter/debris and some cans of pesticide that we recommended they remove, they were in good shape. Mops were hung, trash bags were changed daily, and most buckets were dry.

The LPS school, like OPS, is well on its way to implementing their IPM program. Both schools have or will be receiving recommendations after this second visit that will help guide them in the process.

Healthy Tribal Communities Training

September 14th brought Clyde, Barb, and myself from UNL, Mark from IA State, Jim and Jon from South Dakota State, and Sue Ratcliffe from Illinois to Sioux City, IA to provide training on IPM to tribes in EPA region 7. Mike Daniels, who has joined us in both our South Dakota and Nebraska IPM in Schools projects, organized the training with the help of Dick Wiechman from EPA.

The agenda included talks on general IPM, pest ID, pest species (cockroaches, ants, flies, bed bugs, rodents, and head lice), pesticides and pesticide labels, and recordkeeping.

Following the presentations, we took the group of about 35 people, representing tribes from several states, to a local high school, where we did a walkthrough of the kitchen, home ec room, special ed room, custodial area, and perimeter. It was a great educational opportunity to teach the participants about IPM and what process we have followed when visiting schools. We showed them particular conducive conditions and vulnerable areas and what pests might be common in those situations. We hope they are able to take what they learned into their own school systems and practice IPM!

Second IPM Visit to Omaha Public Schools

On Sept 9, we visited our OPS demonstration school for the second time. Clyde, Barb, Stephen and I met with administration and staff to discuss how they were progressing on developing a recordkeeping book. They are going to create a print notebook that will either be housed with the IPM coordinator or in the main office that both the staff and the pest management professional can access. The principal mentioned that she will also send information about it out on a school listserv to make staff aware that they can report pest sightings.

After these discussions we visited the kitchen, staff lounge, food storage area, custodial closets and other areas we had seen during the first visit. There is still a roach problem (primarily German in the kitchen and primarily Oriental in the boiler room) and we gave recommendations on how to approach this issue. We were very pleased to see that the Roach prufe that had been applied under Home Ec sinks had been removed. We encouraged the head custodian (IPM Coordinator) to also remove other pesticides, such as Raid, from the facility. We also checked sticky traps and noted what pests were found and replaced with new traps in the same areas to continue monitoring.

Outside, Stephen gave advice on how to better "insulate" portable classrooms from wildlife and rodents, including using hardcloth, sealing holes, and putting crushed gravel or other appropriate materials around foundations where there are gaps.

We will be sending out written recommendations soon...some of them are general practices we have told other schools...remove pesticides such as Raid, check entryways and replace doorsweeps where necessary, reduce moisture and clutter, and increase sanitation in vulnerable areas.


At the tail end of our visit, we also found a great biological control, a Chinese praying mantis, who was in the landscape. I took him home for a few days, then let him go on some bushes at UNL :-)

Week of IPM in Schools in-services

With school about to go back in session, the Omaha and Lincoln Public schools held in-service training for their custodial and food service staff this week and we were invited to speak. On Monday, Clyde, Stephen Vantassel, Barb Ogg, and I spoke at the LPS custodial in-service with about 300 people in attendance. We gave them information about general IPM and the demonstration project going on in the district,as well as presentations on specific pests--flies, rodents, and cockroaches. We also got questions on ants and head lice!

On Wednesday we met at a school in Omaha to train about 100 food service managers. In addition to doing the IPM, roach, and rodent presentations again, we did a talk focused on head lice and bed bugs. Although these wouldn't be probable pests in a kitchen setting, we discussed them at the request of the school. We certainly had their rapt attention, but also saw many shivers and scratching heads during the talk :-)

Finally, today I did a 45 minute presentation on IPM for around 325 LPS food service staff.

We hope that through these in-services and demonstration projects we are doing in the districts that Lincoln and Omaha Public Schools will embrace IPM and encourage its use in all their schools. Cooperation between the pest management company and the school is also of great importance in order to make a good IPM program work. We have emphasized both in the in-services and the visits that a good recordkeeping practice should be put in place to keep the PMP and the school informed of pest sightings and what IPM methods are being used to control pest problems.

We look forward to moving the schools in the direction of IPM with a goal of district adoption.

Pesticide Education and IPM at Nebraska City

Last week the Pesticide Education Office here at UNL hosted the North Central Region Pesticide Education and Certification Workshop (NCRPECW) at the Lied Lodge in beautiful Nebraska City, home of Arbor Day. We had great presentations about stormwater runoff, phosphine, atrazine and keeping pesticides off nontarget sites, NPDES, online Pesticide Safety Education Program training, social media, Camtasia, Sensitive crop locator, IPM in Iowa schools, and many other relevant and interesting topics to North Central Region university extension and state lead agency colleagues.

On Wednesday we did a tour of the Arbor Day Farm and Kimmel Orchard, where we saw a variety of Nebraska alternative agriculture such as hazelnuts, woody florals, grapes, peaches, and apples. Some also visited the Whiskey Run Creek winery where there is an old cave that has been refurbished from the days of prohibition!

We received many compliments about the location, the food, and the conference and we thank everyone for coming!

After the NCRPECW, Clyde and I remained at the Lied Lodge and attended the annual North Central Region IPM Working group meeting, which included a walkthrough of NE City schools, with whom we may do a future demonstration project.

Overall a very productive and informative week!

July 7th IPM Coalition

We had our third IPM coalition meeting of the year yesterday. We were joined by OPS and LPS, as well as EPA, UNL Extension, tribal, and pest management professional representatives.

Our guest speaker was Mark Shour, who works in the Pesticide Safety Education Program and IPM at IA State University, and with whom Clyde and I have been working in South Dakota. He came to talk about his work with IPM in Iowa Schools. He covered survey data taken from polling Iowa schools about their pesticide practices, and IPM pilot programs he conducted for the interior (4 districts) and turf and landscape (5 districts) areas of the schools. He also discussed a Midwest IPM workshop that was conducted in 2004 by and for Extension individuals from Midwestern states. Participants were individuals who were already doing IPM in their states (who gave presentations), and people who were interested in starting IPM programs. Finally, Mark explained that he did IPM training for districts that requested it.

We also discussed an overview of the first demonstrations at Lincoln and Omaha, with both districts expressing that they felt they learned a lot and will be following through on suggestions made for things found during the walkthrough. We also reported on the upcoming in-services that we'll be doing at LPS (Custodial and Food Service) and OPS (food service) in August. We'll be doing presentations about general IPM, as well as specific pests such as cockroaches and mice.

Mike Daniels from the Winnebago tribe spoke about a tribal nations conference being held in September. As part of that, Barb, Clyde, Stephen, Mark and I will be doing presentations on various IPM issues. Other parts of the conference will include information about healthy homes, including topics such as lead and asbestos. Mike also mentioned that he had bought 500 lice combs in bulk that he is going to distribute to school nurses on the reservation as well as other places that would be conducive to head to head contact among children, such as daycares and swimming pools. Giving out these combs will help reduce embarrassment children and parents may experience when they have to go and buy them in the store. Also, he received the combs for about $1.10 apiece, as opposed to drugstore costs of around $10-15 for a comb.

Our next coalition meeting will be on October 6 and we'll be welcoming Tom Green from the IPM Institute to talk about IPM Star Certification.

Turf Assessment in Lincoln

Yesterday we visited our Lincoln school again and examined the turf. Clyde and I were joined by the head school custodian, Roch Gaussoin, turf specialist at UNL, and one of the school's groundskeepers. There was a lot of white clover growth, which can be both good and bad!

Roch said that until the 1950's, clover was actually included in part of the seed mix for lawns because it helps release nitrogen. He mentioned that if the school wanted to, they could actually allow the clover to be the primary groundcover. The only concern might be potential liability issues with bees (student and staff allergic reactions)

Increasing fertility (using more fertilizers, such as one application in the fall) would greatly cut down the amount of clover. However, this would encourage grass growth and result in the need for mowing more often. The school has limited manpower to address the turf at all the Lincoln schools, so this might not be the preferable option.

Another thing of note was that mulch was compounded around the trees. The trees were planted well, at the proper depth. Roch suggested that the mulch just be spread out a bit away from the tree rather than mounded so tightly against it. This will help reduce mower hits against the tree as well.

The groundskeeper also mentioned that sports turf areas in LPS are the only places where herbicides are used because these areas have a higher priority to be maintained. He mentioned otherwise they just mow, and they don't fertilize the general turf.

Overall, we offered the school a variety of options in addressing their turf health and our recommendations take into consideration that their decisions have to be based on time and personnel.

Finally, Clyde also suggested that the sports turf groundskeeper as well as any other interested district groundskeepers attend the Green Expo in January. This is great for both pesticide applicator recertification as well as updated information about landscape and turf issues.