Measuring the Success of School IPM in Texas

Project Coordinator

Janet A. Hurley
Southwest Technical Resource Center
Texas Cooperative Extension
17360 Coit Road
Dallas, TX 75252
972-952-9213
972-952-9632 (fax)
ja-hurley@tamu.edu

Project Duration: November 2004 - October 2006

Executive Summary

Quality pest control is a critical component of school maintenance programs and contributes significantly to indoor environmental quality and safety measures. In recent years, however, standard pest control practices have been questioned because of increased concern over the effects of pesticides on children's health. Integrated pest management (IPM) has been shown to reduce the amount of pesticides needed to control pests as well as improve the overall quality of pest control. Since 1995, the state of Texas has required all public schools to follow IPM practices. Texas is looked to as a model for other states considering mandatory IPM legislation; however, the impact and success of Texas' regulations has never been extensively evaluated.

The objectives of our proposal include: 1) assessing the current extent of adoption of IPM practices in Texas schools compared to pre-1995; 2) assessing the impact of mandatory IPM legislation on pest control budgets, pest complaints, pesticide-related complaints, pesticide use and other objective measures of program success; and 3) assessing the impact of the educational programs of the Southwest Technical Resource Center for School IPM on IPM implementation in Texas schools.

Our objectives will be met through a statewide mail questionnaire addressed to heads of maintenance departments of the 1039 Texas school districts, and through on-site IPM audits of at least 20 school districts. This project will have nationwide impact, as it is the first major retrospective study of the impact of the most comprehensive school IPM legislation in the nation. Results of this study will provide data for lawmakers considering mandatory school IPM legislation on state and federal levels.

Project Description and Objectives

For this project we propose to develop a statewide mail survey questionnaire for school IPM coordinators and others as part of a ten-year, retrospective evaluation of the impact of the Texas School IPM law. In addition we propose to conduct on-site interviews of selected school districts to gather more detailed information than can be gathered through mailed questionnaires. The objectives of the project are as follows:

To assess the current level of adoption of IPM practices in Texas schools and compare to the levels of adoption prior to implementation of the mandatory IPM state law in 1995.
To assess the impact of mandatory IPM legislation on pest control budgets, pest complaints, pesticide-related complaints, pesticide use and other objective measures of program success.
To assess the impact of the educational programs of the Southwest Technical Resource Center for School IPM on IPM implementation in Texas schools.

Justification

In 1991 the Texas legislature passed one of the first laws in the U.S. requiring all schools to implement integrated pest management as part of their school maintenance programs. The law, which took effect in 1995, required all Texas public schools to use less toxic pesticides and to require licensing of all pesticide applicators on school district property. In addition, the law required all schools in Texas to adopt a school board-approved integrated pest management (IPM) policy and to appoint and train a school district IPM coordinator. Since 1991, a number of other states and school districts have implemented similar measures, and federal legislation has even been proposed to require school districts nationwide to adopt IPM.

In deciding whether such legislation makes economic or environmental sense, lawmakers would benefit from studies looking at the long-term impact of such legislation on school districts in states, such as Texas, where such laws have been implemented. Remarkably, despite the existence of Texas' long-term experience with mandatory IPM, no data exists on the impact of such legislation on key success indicators such as pesticide use, reduced risk to school children, or improvements in pest control.

Because Texas has one of the most comprehensive and long-running mandatory IPM programs in the nation it provides an ideal location to evaluate the impact of mandatory school IPM legislation. We propose to conduct a retrospective, statewide evaluation of the impact of school IPM legislation in Texas. The survey would be timed to evaluate the impact of ten years of the Texas school IPM law, and would look at school adoption levels and other key indicators of program success. Such a study would help enforcement agencies and legislators objectively evaluate the impact of the Texas law, and would provide other state and federal lawmakers with valuable information to inform the design of additional state or federal mandatory programs.

The Southwest Technical Resource Center for School IPM (SWTRC) was formed in 2001 for the purpose of helping school districts implement IPM programs in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Since is conception, the Southwest Technical Resource Center for IPM in Schools has assisted over 100 school districts with compliance issues and trained over 600 individuals full or partial day workshops on IPM. As part of the statewide survey we will compare school districts that have utilized the services of the SWTRC to those that have not, in order to assess the impact of center programs on implementation and other key measures of IPM adoption and success. The SWTRC serves as a potential model of low-cost compliance assistance that might be used by other states implementing mandatory IPM programs.

Overall Summary

Children's health has become a high priority issue for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA 1993). The Bush Administration recently reaffirmed its commitment to children's health issues, announcing an extension of the Presidential Task Force on Environmental Health and Safety Risks to Children as part of his efforts to increase federal coordination on a wide range of children's health issues (EPA 2003).

Quality pest control protects children's health in a variety of ways. Pest management reduces the risks of bites and stings from venomous insects, helps prevent contamination of food preparation areas and other critical sites from rodents, cockroaches, ants, birds and a variety of other pests (Mallis 1997).

Use of integrated approaches to pest control (i.e., IPM) has been shown to reduce the amount of pesticides needed to control pests as well as improve the overall quality of pest control (EPA, 2002). Integrated pest management is currently the most widely accepted approach to pest management. The IPM approach relies heavily on education and knowledge about pest biology to design pest control strategies that rely on multiple tactics. One of the goals of IPM is to reduce heavy reliance on pesticides in the indoor environment. The U.S. EPA supports the use of IPM in school environments as the best, most environmentally sound approach to pest control (EPA, 1993).

In an effort to reduce the risk of pesticide to school children, Texas passed one of the earliest and most comprehensive state laws concerning pest control on school property (see Note 1). Regulations for the Texas school IPM law were implemented in 1995 and specify how school districts in Texas must apply pesticides and conduct pest control operations (see Note 2). In Texas, the school IPM regulations are enforced by the Texas Structural Pest Control Board.

A statewide survey of IPM practice in Texas was conducted in 1993, prior to the implementation of the school IPM regulations. Shodrock (1994) obtained responses from 517 school districts concerning their pest control programs. Districts were questioned about their familiarity with IPM, pest control budgets and treatments, types of pests encountered, frequency of pesticide applications, and documented health related aspects of pests and pesticides. In addition, ten school districts were randomly selected for pest monitoring. Sticky traps were used to measure pest presence for six months. Of the original ten districts selected by Shodrock, only three have had subsequent contact with the Southwest Technical Resource Center.

Several states besides Texas have conducted statewide surveys on IPM practice and pesticide use in schools, including California (Geiger and Tootelian 2003), Pennsylvania (Long 2001), Minnesota (MDA 1999), Iowa (Shour 2001), and Alabama (Rumph, Cofer et al. 2000). Of these, only Pennsylvania conducted a retrospective study, three years after an initial survey (Long 1998). This study showed apparent progress in school IPM adoption, with IPM use increasing from 45.9% to 70.7% of districts surveyed. Progress in Pennsylvania apparently occurred as a result of a vigorous education campaign by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. It is difficult, however, to assess true adoption of IPM practices. In Texas, an environmental advocacy group assessed IPM adoption using criteria that included use of least toxic materials and accurate record-keeping (Wong 1999). Although the analysis was non-scientific, it did show uneven adoption of IPM and probable overuse of pesticides among seven school districts, despite districts' claims to be using IPM. Criteria used by Wong included percentages of pesticides used that fell into Texas' Green List (see Note 3) and numbers of emergency exemptions requested. In addition, she audited the pesticide use records of the seven districts.

Texas has the second largest population of schoolchildren in the United States with over four million students statewide, 7380 schools and 1,039 school districts (see Note 4). Under Texas law, every school district must appoint a school IPM Coordinator with responsibility for managing and overseeing all aspects of the district's IPM program. The SWTRC provides four two-day regional training programs annually for IPM Coordinators, as well as maintaining a toll-free help line, website and bimonthly newsletter on school IPM.

Approach and Outcomes

The objectives of the project are as follows:

To assess the current level of adoption of IPM practices in Texas schools and compare to the levels of adoption prior to implementation of the mandatory IPM state law in 1995.
To assess the impact of mandatory IPM legislation on pest control budgets, pest complaints, pesticide-related complaints, pesticide use and other objective measures of program success.
To assess the impact of the educational programs of the Southwest Technical Resource Center for School IPM on IPM implementation in Texas schools.

We propose to meet these objectives via two activities: a statewide mail questionnaire survey delivered to all 1039 school districts and 20 on-site audits of selected school districts. The statewide survey will help us achieve objectives 1) and 3). On-site audits with school district personnel at 20 selected school districts will help us meet objective 2).

Statewide Survey

The statewide survey will be conducted with the cooperation and assistance of the Texas Structural Pest Control Board (SPCB) and Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). Both agencies will be asked to provide input and to critique the survey instrument during development. In addition, TASB will contact all school districts, prior to the delivery of the survey, to encourage participation and explain the purposes of the project.

The SPCB will provide a cover letter for the survey. Having the support of a state regulatory agency or a major school association to which many of the respondents belong, has been demonstrated to increase the response rate of similar surveys (Geiger and Tootelian 2003).

In addition to input from the SPCB and TASB the survey instrument will be reviewed by Drs. Paul Pope and Chris Boleman, extension evaluation specialists with Texas Cooperative Extension and Texas A&M University's Department of Agricultural Education. These specialists will ensure that the survey is designed to accurately assess knowledge, impact assessment, and behavioral changes/modifications that have taken place as a result of the school IPM law. Where possible, we will include questions in the survey that mirror questions asked in the previous survey by Shodrock (1994). This will allow comparison of IPM practice in Texas schools from 1993 to date.

Questionnaires will be sent to district heads of maintenance and operation. There is currently no up-to-date or complete database of all Texas school IPM coordinators. For this reason, and because experience has shown that the best point of contact for communicating with unknown school IPM coordinators is through heads of maintenance departments, all surveys will be sent to the attention of the "Head of Maintenance and Operation." Surveys will be mailed out with a pre-paid return envelope and up to two reminder letters will be sent to non-respondents.

Simply asking administrators whether their district follows IPM principles in their pest control operations is unlikely to provide a complete or true picture of the level of IPM adoption (Wong 1999). Integrated pest management is a complex innovation (Rogers 1983) that requires adoption of numerous practices and behaviors (Flint et al. 1991). Questions on the survey will be designed to assign districts a score based on their depth of understanding and level of IPM implementation. This will allow us to compare the levels of training since the implementation of the law with a numerical IPM scores. In addition, we should be able to compare adoption levels with absentee rates and other potential measures of success for IPM programs. We will also compare adoption levels between districts that have received compliance assistance and training from the SWTRC with those that have not. In this way, we hope to measure the impact of SWTRC programs on school pest control programs.

Site Audits

On-site audits will allow us to ask in-depth questions of multiple administrators in school districts, and will serve as a validation tool for the mail questionnaire in selected districts.

The coordinator for the SWTRC will make site visits to at least 20 school districts to review recordkeeping, budget expenses, pesticide storage facilities, pesticide use, and verify employee satisfaction with the district's IPM program. Half of the schools visited will include those which have received prior compliance assistance or training from the SWTRC, and half will include districts that have had no prior contact with the SWTRC. Audits will allow us to validate the results from previously mailed questionnaires (for districts responding to earlier survey) and will allow us to gain a better assessment of true IPM adoption rates among Texas schools.

Analysis and Reporting

Questionnaires will be scanned and data analyzed at the Extension education unit of the Department of Agricultural Education at Texas A&M University. Upon completion of data analysis, results will be discussed with cooperators at the Texas Structural Pest Control Board and the Texas Association of School Boards, and a final report will be submitted to the U.S. EPA PESP. In addition, we will summarize the results for articles in trade magazines and a publication for the Journal of Extension.

Impact Assessment

Results of the surveys and audits will be used to assess the impact of Texas' school IPM legislation on school district pest control programs. Such programs directly impact school environmental quality, including indoor air quality, pesticide levels in schools, and pest populations with their associated health impacts. These, in turn are believed to influence attendance rates and overall satisfaction with the quality of the working and learning environment. This project will have nationwide impact as the first major retrospective study of the impact of the most comprehensive school IPM legislation in the nation. Results of this study will provide data to lawmakers considering mandatory school IPM legislation on state and federal levels. Results will be made available to decision-makers and the public through a refereed journal article and articles in trade magazines.

Literature Cited

EPA (1993). Pest control in the school environment: adopting integrated pest management. EPA 735-F-93-012. Washington, D.C., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

EPA, U. S. (2002). Protecting Children in schools from Pests and Pesticides. EPA-735-F-02-014, Washington, DC, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Pesticide Programs.

EPA, U. S. (2003). President Extends Executive Order for Task Force on Environmental Risks to Children. EPA News Release April 12, 2003.

Flint, M. L., S. Daar and R. Molinar. (1991). Establishing Integrated Pest Management policies and programs: A guide for public agencies. UC IPM Publication 12. 9 pp. Davis, CA, Univ. of CA.

Geiger, C. A. and D. H. Tootelian (2003). 2002 Integrated pest management survey of California School Districts. Sacramento, CA, California Department of Pesticide Regulation : 46.

Long, J. K., Jr. (1998). Final report of the IPM in Schools Survey: Results from the 1998 survey of Pennsylvania schools. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture : 13 pp.

Long, J. K., Jr. (2001). Final report of the IPM in Schools Survey: Results from the 2001 survey of Pennsylvania school districts. Harrisburg, PA, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture : 12 pp.

Mallis, A., Ed. (1997). Handbook of Pest Control. Cleveland, OH, Mallis Handbook & Technical Training Company.

MDA, Minnesota Department of Agriculture (1999). Quantitative research regarding pest management practices in Minnesota K-12 Schools. St. Paul, MN, Minnesota Department of Agriculture: 147 pp.

Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations. New York, The Free Press.

Rumph, M., T. Cofer, et al. (2000). Report of the Alabama IPM in Schools Working Group 2000 Alabama School IPM Survey. Auburn, Auburn University.

Shour, M. (2001). Pesticides and disinfectant use in Iowa schools. Ames, Iowa State University : 7.

Wong, B. (1999). Pesticide Report Card: Texas schools score from A to F in the Integrated Pest Management program. Austin, Texas Pesticide Information Network / Consumers Union : 29 pp.

Timetable

Month 1 to 6.
Assemble advisory committee for questionnaire development, draft and pre-test mail questionnaire, assemble mailing list for 1,039 school districts and send out early survey notification through TASB.

Month 6 to 9.
Mail survey, follow up with post cards to non-respondents, begin data entry.

Month 9 to 12.
Work with Texas A&M University's Extension and Education Unit to complete data entry and analysis. Select school districts for on-site audits and make initial contacts with Heads of Maintenance and IPM Coordinators.

Month 12 to 20.
Travel to and conduct on-site audits of at least 20 school districts.

Month 21 to 24.
Compile and analyze data. Share results with SPCB and TASB. Write final report for EPA and prepare articles for selected trade magazines.

Major Participants

Janet A. Hurley, Extension Assistant & School IPM Program Coordinator

Southwest Technical Resource Center for IPM in Schools and Child Care Facilities, Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas A&M University System.

Project coordinator, will oversee the project, will provide input into the school survey and will conduct the twenty in-district school audits.

Michael E. Merchant, Professor and Extension Urban Entomologist

Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas A&M University System.

Project advisor, will assist in input into school survey and project analysis. Will also write any articles associated with this project.

Don Renchie, Program Leader and Pesticide Applicator Training Coordinator

Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas A&M University System, Department of Ag & Environmental Safety and Adjunct Faculty for Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Dr. Renchie is associated with Dr. Chandra Elbert who oversees a graduate class on writing thesis projects. Dr. Renchie and Dr. Elbert have offered to use this class to help this project if needed to analyze the date. Dr. Renchie will also add input into the initial survey tool.

Paul Pope, Extension Program Specialist - Evaluation

Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas A&M University System, Extension Education.

Mr. Pope will oversee the school survey portion of the project, he will oversee the final questions that will be asked on the schools in Texas, as well as oversee the data analysis.

Project Budget

Funding Request
Budget Category	Funding Requested	Matching Non-Federal Funds	Matching Federal Funds
First Year Funding	$39,587	0	0
Second Year Funding	0	0	0
Total Funding	$39,587	0	0