Toxic Crusaders

When Sherman Oaks resident Robina Suwol drove her two sons to school in the Valley March 1998, she didn’t know she was about to become a crusader. The events of that morning kicked off a chain of events resulting in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) new integrated pest control policy, now considered a model for school districts across the nation.

When the Suwol family arrived at Sherman Oaks Elementary, they were greeted by the sight of a man in white coveralls spraying weeds on the school grounds. Nicholas Suwol, then 6, accidentally walked into the path of the spray and cried, “It tastes terrible!” Suwol then realized that the man was clad in a hazardous materials suit.

Suwol, an actress, swung into action that evening after Nicholas suffered a serious asthma attack. She found that environmental groups had linked the weedkiller used at the school site to breathing problems and serious health risks.

Other Jewish parents, including Ashley Posner and Wendy Cohen, rallied around the issue of toxic chemicals on LAUSD campuses. An ad hoc committee uncovered many areas of concern throughout the district, including routine spraying in the presence of students and the use of pesticides in amounts sometimes far exceeding manufacturers’ recommendations.

Julie Korenstein and David Tokofsky were among the LAUSD school board members who quickly got behind the parents’ efforts. But Ashley Posner remembers “a great deal of resistance on the part of the school district bureaucracy,” which he describes as “a ponderous vehicle, and very difficult to change.”

Calling upon scientists, pediatricians and pest control experts, the parents slowly persuaded LAUSD that its goal of eliminating weeds, insects and rodents could largely be attained through the use of environmentally friendly gels and bait traps, with toxic chemicals a last resort. The resulting policy, which creates a protocol for preventing pests as well as eradicating them, also requires that families be notified of pesticides used on their home campuses.

Lynn Roberts, LAUSD’s director of maintenance and operations, describes the new policy as “absolutely state of the art.” She notes it has brought many procedural changes to the district, including more frequent deep cleaning of campus kitchens to stop pest problems before they begin. Whereas recently there have been only nine gardeners to serve all 400 district elementary schools, funding is now in place to increase that number more than tenfold. And LAUSD will soon get its own fulltime integrated pest manager to make sure the policy is correctly implemented. Though all this has meant a rise in labor costs, it is at least partially offset by savings on expensive chemicals. And, of course, there are major health benefits to students, teachers and staff members, who no longer are exposed to potentially hazardous materials.

Suwol insists her group succeeded because it remained “polite and persistent,” relying on “a lot of dignity, a lot of grace, a tremendous amount of documentation to support our stance.”

Roberts, of the LAUSD, partially disagrees. While emphasizing that the district never resisted the thinking behind the new program, she admits that she and her staff “did resent some of the approaches that attacked our personnel.” Although she hints at some personality clashes while the new policy was being hammered out, Roberts acknowledges the value of the parents’ efforts: “Their involvement and their knowledge were very helpful to us.”

Suwol, who has largely abandoned her acting career to focus on environmental issues, is quick to point out that parents of many religious and ethnic backgrounds were involved in the fight to establish the LAUSD policy.

In her new role as a co-founder of the Los Angeles Safe Schools Coalition, she often finds herself working with the Concerned Citizens of South Central, Mothers of East Los Angeles, the Philippine Action Group for the Environment, and other organizations. One ongoing project is a sound wall for some mostly Latino schoolchildren in Boyle Heights who must currently eat their lunches on an outdoor playground next to a well-traveled freeway.

While people of many backgrounds have come together, both Posner and Suwol are convinced that the spirit of Judaism is at work. “Jews have always placed health as a primary concern, along with education. When these two concerns intersect, it’s a Jewish issue along with a human issue,” Posner says. Suwol agrees: “You are responsible for your fellow man, and that is part of what Judaism is about.”

Early on, some district officials tried to convince her to focus solely on her own children’s school, ignoring the larger problems she was beginning to uncover. But Suwol recalls her father teaching her the famous words of Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”

More information about the Los Angeles Unified School
District Integrated Pest Management Policy is available through the Los Angeles
Safe Schools Coalition Web site, at www.lassc.org .