Notifications
Annual: Schools are required to notify all faculty, staff and parents/guardians annually about use of pesticides in schools, or on the school grounds. Schools are required to create a database of people who wish to be notified 48 hours in advance of a pesticide application, and they must make people aware of how to get their 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). Read a sample annual notice (PDF).
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. Read a sample 48 hour notification (PDF).
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. Read a sample follow-up notice (PDF).
Emergency Applications: If an application is made because of an imminent threat to human health, and a 48-hour notification period is not possible, 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 (PDF).
Note: Albany County Schools have an additional requirement of the State Neighbor Notification Law.
Need Pesticide Application Credits?
Cornell Cooperative Extension has a database showing all pesticide applicators courses. Note, the site is slow, but useful. If you want to search by DEC Region, Glens Falls and Saratoga are in region 5, and Albany and Schenectady are in region 4.
Another useful link:
New
York State Integrated Pest Management (Cornell University)
