Schools Need Remedial Weeding

A number of San Fernando Valley high schools are experiencing a different kind of growing pain--weeds sprouting through their asphalt playgrounds that they attribute to a districtwide ban on strong herbicides.

The Los Angeles Unified School District last year prohibited the use of potent and potentially hazardous weedkillers, which many campus officials say are the only thing that will effectively combat weeds.

The district’s integrated pest management team did approve one environmentally safe herbicide, Scythe, for use on school grounds, but it has not worked well.

“Our gardener runs a mower over the weeds to get them down to one inch, and then he uses a hoe and sharp devices to get them out of the cracks,” El Camino Real High School Principal Ronald Bauer said. “Then we pray to the weed gods to slow their growth.”

El Camino Real, a Woodland Hills campus with only one gardener, has weeds up to a foot high poking through cracks in the asphalt on outside basketball and tennis courts. In the late afternoon, when no students are around, the grounds look as though the school has been long abandoned.

To combat the problem, the LAUSD has dispatched teams with equipment ranging from string trimmers to torches, said Robert Hamm, deputy director of maintenance operations. What works best, though, is a combination of tractors, hand tools and good old-fashioned elbow grease, he said.

Reseda High School Principal Robert Kladifko said his campus gardener reserves a day each week for plucking weeds, taking time normally used for equipment maintenance.

“It’s a very time-consuming issue you have to keep up with,” Kladifko said. “If you don’t, it just overcomes you.”

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While the principals at weedy schools bemoan the extra time it takes their staffs to smooth out their campuses, three San Francisco-based environmental groups say: Get used to it. One of them, Californians for Pesticide Reform, has a pair of lobbyists in Sacramento today pushing for tighter controls on the use of chemicals at the state’s schools.

The state Assembly last year passed a bill that would restrict all California schools from using the most dangerous herbicides and pesticides, including a number of household products widely available on the market. Gov. Gray Davis vetoed the bill, but a similar measure, called the Healthy Schools Act of 2000, is being considered this week by the Assembly.

Matthew Shaffer, a toxics policy advocate for the California Public Interest Research Group, said the bill follows the example set by the LAUSD, one of seven California school districts--including others in Ventura and Orange counties--that have bans on strong herbicides.

Such a strict prohibition, however, has little chance to become law, said Monica Moore, program director for Pesticide Action Network of North America. The current version of the bill allows a wider range of chemicals on campus, as long as schools notify parents what chemicals would be used, she said.

“There is a general rising concern around kids’ health and exposure to chemicals because they spend so much time in schools,” Moore said. “The types of approaches we’re talking about don’t necessarily mean no chemicals ever, just no chemical linked to cancer used around kids.”

Bauer said the LAUSD ban is too restrictive, regulating beyond the point of common sense.

“This prohibition against any kind of chemical has gotten to the point that, when I go in the restroom, I have to ask the ants to leave,” Bauer said. “They don’t listen. It’s like at home, where you try to keep the place as clean as possible, but we know when a rainstorm comes, it will bring ants and weeds.”

The quandary, Kladifko said, is that school administrators agree that kids should not be exposed to harsh chemicals, but at the same time, the weeds can be a serious safety hazard.

“We just have to find other ways to get rid of them,” Kladifko said.

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Canoga Park High has a built-in weed-control system--its Environmental Science Magnet program. Principal Dennis Thompson said that, as part of their course work, students in the program manually trim the weeds.

“We have another advantage other schools don’t have,” Thompson said. “Our school is so old that many people from the community went to school here. If they see weeds on campus, they volunteer to help us remove them.”

Not all Valley schools are overrun with weeds. Principals at other area campuses, including Van Nuys, Chatsworth and Sylmar high schools, said they have no problem keeping their weeds under control.