The Naselle Grays-River Valley School District will provide a safe and healthy environment for students, staff, and members of the community who use school properties. To this end, the District will utilize safe and effective practices to control structural, nuisance, and landscape pest.

Pests are defined as living organisms that, by situation or size of their population, adversely interferes with the health, safety, functional, or economic goals of humans. Pesticides and herbicides used to control pests can pose health risks if used indiscriminately.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a sustainable approach to managing pests by combining biological, cultural, physical and chemical tools in a way that minimizes economic, health and environmental risks. IPM emphasizes preventing and reducing pest problems by using active, non-chemical control practices, rather than responding to a pest crisis through the use of pesticides or herbicides. IPM programs take advantage of all pest management options, including, but not limited to, the judicious use of pesticides and herbicides.

To minimize risk from pests and pesticides, the District will implement an integrated pest management program. Integrated pest management practices will be used to prevent pest problems and in cases where a pest population reaches an unacceptable threshold that could adversely impact the school environment.

The policy that Naselle School District #155 follows is to use as little pesticide as possible.  To minimize the potential for exposure to students and staff, we strive to do all applications during the summer or on breaks when the school is closed. In the event that we need to make an application during school, we wait until a Friday afternoon and  after students are gone for the weekend before starting the application.  This gives us 48 hours before students and staff return.  The grounds are posted for 48 hours with the name of the product used and when and where it was applied.  We record the application in a database that was supplied by “Washington State Department of Agriculture”.