Annual:  Schools are required to notify all faculty, staff and parents/guardians annually about use of pesticides in schools, or on the school grounds.  The requirement is that the school create a database of people who wish to be notified 48 hours in advance of a pesticide application, and that those people are made aware of how to get there names on that list.  The school must do the notification annually, and maintain the list, even if they have no plans on using pesticides, because the possibility exists that they may use them.  This notification must be done at the beginning of the school year and at the beginning of summer school (if your school has summer school) For an example of this notification, Click here.  

48 Hour:  If the school does apply pesticides, or hires a contractor to apply pesticides, the school then must notify all of the people in the database about the scheduled application.  It is always a good idea to provide a "rain date" in case conditions are not ideal for the application.  If you have several buildings and facilities in your school district, you may wish to know  which people will want to be notified about the applications in which buildings.  For an example of the 48 hour notification Click here.

Follow-up:  If the school does apply pesticides, in addition to the 48-hour notification, there must be a follow-up notification.  This is done 10 days before the end of the school year (or summer school), 2 days before the end of winter break (usually February), and or 2 days before the end of spring break (usually in April).  This notification includes information about the notification lists, and information about recent pesticide applications.  For an example, Click here

Emergency Applications:  If an application is made because of an imminent threat to human health, and a 48-hour notification period is not able to be done, a good-faith effort must be made to notify those individuals on the notification list, with an explanation of why the application is necessary. This would be essentially the same as a 48 hour notification. The Department of Health has an exemption reporting form that needs to be submitted.  For Microsoft word:  Page 1 of 2, Page 2 of 2 For HTML:  Page 1 of 2, Page 2 of 2

Albany County Schools have an additional requirement of the State Neighbor Notification Law.  For information about that click here.

Need Pesticide Application Credits?

Cornell Cooperative Extension has a database showing all off the pesticide applicators courses.  It is slow, but useful.  FYI, if you want to search by DEC Region Glens Falls and Saratoga are in region 5, Albany and Schenectady are in region 4.  Click this link

               Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Links

New York State Integrated Pest Management (Cornell University)