• Post warning signs 24 hours before treatment at each site where pesticides will be applied.
• Leave signs for 72 hours after treatment.
• Display the term “Warning/Pesticide Treated Area” and include product name, manufacturer’s name, U.S. EPA product registration number, intended date and areas of application, and reason for the pesticide application.

1. Notify parents of expected pesticide treatments for the coming year. Pest control businesses may need to work with IPM coordinators or school administrators to develop product lists for these notifications. The notifications must identify the active ingredient or ingredients in each product, as well as the product name itself. Remember that there are usually many products that contain a given active ingredient. Also, there is sometimes more than one active ingredient in a product. You can look up product names from active ingredient, and vice versa, using the links below. (Note that products exempt from registration may not be listed on DPR's databases. For example, products qualifying as U.S. EPA "minimum risk" (FIFRA 25(b)) pesticides are exempt, although some manufacturers choose to register them.)
   
   
2. Notify interested parents before individual pesticide applications
   School sites must notify interested parents of planned pesticide treatments at least 72 hours before each application. The notices must include name, active ingredient(s), and intended date of application.
   
   
3. If a product to be used was not listed in the most recent annual notification, the school IPM coordinator must notify all parents at least 72 hours before application. This will require good coordination between pest control businesses and school districts.
   
   

Pest management professionals should already be familiar with IPM. In an IPM program, prevention is always the preferred strategy. Monitoring is essential to decide whether treatment is really necessary, and to measure the success of previous efforts. When you do use pesticides, you will want to choose the least hazardous products possible for the job. Remember that just because a tactic is “standard practice” does not mean it is the best choice, in terms of either effectiveness or safety. For example:

• Perimeter spraying is generally a poor tactic for ant control. While such sprays may appear to give quick results, they have little effect on the colony.
• Calendar-based treatment schedules are generally inappropriate. Though convenient to schedule, calendar-based spraying usually results in unnecessarily high pesticide use.

Download complete kit or download individual documents below. We have included versions that you can edit (Microsoft Word) for some documents; others are in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format.