Michele Curreri: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Technical Webinar Series. Today’s presentation is entitled “Prevent Air Pollution at the Source, School Chemical Cleanout.” My name is Michele Curreri. I’m with EPA’s Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program and thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to attend this exciting and interactive webinar. Before we get started, I’d like to take a few minutes to go over the webinar objectives. So, today’s webinar, you will be introduced to the fundamentals of chemical management in schools. You’ll learn about the importance of performing a chemical cleanout at your school, you’ll gain insight on how to establish a chemical management plan as part of your comprehensive indoor air quality management program, you’ll discover effective steps all schools can take to responsibly manage chemicals and finally, you’ll have an opportunity to have your questions answered by national chemical management experts. Just as a point of information for everyone today, all of our PowerPoint slides, a complete listing of the questions and those answers, documents and other resources from today’s webinar will be available about a month from today on the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools website. You’ll also receive an email from us with this information just to make it a little bit easier for you to access it. So, let’s go ahead and get started with our first polling question. What is your experience with the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program and the Action Kit? If you’ll go ahead, we’ll open the polls now and let everyone go ahead and vote. And we’ve got very interesting numbers here about 36 percent of you want to learn more about it; about 28 percent of you have heard of it and you have a Kit, but you’re not using it; 21 percent of you have used the Kit, but you want to learn more and 15 percent of you feel that the IAQ Tools for Schools Action Kit is the foundation of your management program. So, thanks so much for participating in that poll. We’ll go ahead and continue. So, we’ll take a few minutes to review the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program for those of you who don’t know about it, how it got started. The elements and the purpose and how it helps schools manage their indoor environment. The Program began in 1995 with the release of the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Action Kit. The Action Kit is an evolving resource that continues to be a strong foundational element of the program. It provides best practices, walk-through checklist and Industry guidelines, sample policies and sample IAQ management plans to help schools and districts take immediate action to implement effective IAQ management program. The Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program has implemented successfully in tens of thousands of schools nationwide. The EPA learned that what it takes to create an IAQ program that delivers you remarkable health and environmental results that schools are seeking. The EPA took this knowledge and organized it into a framework of proven solutions – the Framework for Effective School Indoor Air Quality Management. The Framework provides that common language to describe the drivers of program success. It offers detailed guidance and a proven strategy, organizational approaches and leadership styles that are fundamental to program effectiveness and present a clear vision of the pathway to school IAQ excellence. Its highly flexible, adaptable structure allows schools regardless of where you’re located, your size, your budget, the condition of you facilities, to use the facilities to launch, reinvigorate, sustain your effective IAQ management program. By applying a cycle of continuous assessment, planning, action and evaluation, the Six Key Drivers work together to deliver effective school indoor air quality management programs. Here are the Six Key Drivers – beginning with organizing your program, moving on to communicating with everyone in your district all the time and in your community. Next, assessing your school indoor air quality environment and how occupants are doing continuously. Next, planning your short-term and long-term actions based on your assessments and other important factors. Then you’re going to take action to solve and prevent IAQ problems, address structural, institutional and behavioral issues and finally, you’re going to be evaluating your results and the impact of your program for continuous improvement. The six Technical Solutions define the most common issues that schools need to address to effectively manage your IAQ risks. One address systematically and aggressively an IAQ management program focuses on the six Technical Solutions, and it will deliver a healthier school environment. So, the six Technical Solutions are – ensuring that you have a quality inspection, operation and maintenance of your heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system; you’re going to have an active and aggressive, control the moisture and the mold that is in your building; you’re going to have a strong integrated pest management program; you’re going to effectively and consistently clean and maintain your or have maintenance activities in your building and your school facility structures; you’re going to use smart, low emitting, low toxicity materials in your buildings in all aspects of it and you’re going to aggressively control sources of pollutants. For example, through anti-idling school bus policies, radon and of course, your chemical management inventory. We’re going to – that’s really what we’re discussing today. Why is it chemical management in schools one of the components of an environmental management program that EPA considers to be critical to effectively address environmental health risks? Well, that’s because it just is so very important. For better or worse, children spend most of their times indoors whether in their home or many hours a day in their school. Children are more sensitive than adults to chemicals and they tend to have a closer contact with contaminated surfaces and their lungs are more susceptible to the pollutants. Given their sensitivity, it’s important to put base chemical inventory storage and management approaches in place to reduce the threat of a chemical spill or misuse of the chemical in your building. By instituting this proactive chemical management program at your school, you can reduce this threat. Chemical management is really important to proactively managing your indoor air quality program in your school. It’s a very important component of your program. During today’s webinar, you’re going to be equipped with the resources and knowledge that you will need to either start implementing your chemical management program or improve your existing chemical management program. So, we’re going to do one more, a few more polling slides before we get started. So, the next polling question is what strategies does your school currently have in place for responsible chemical management? Let’s go ahead and open the poll. We’ve got some very interesting data from this. About 16 percent of you currently have no strategy in place at all, but 55 percent of you has something in place, but you’d like to do more and 19 percent of you are utilizing the tools and resources that the EPA Schools Chemical Cleanout Management Program has in place, and six percent say that it’s the foundation of your chemical management program. Wonderful, all right. We’re hoping that we can up some of those numbers. We’re going to go on to the next polling question. So, how confident do you feel in your school’s approaches to chemical management? All right, interesting that 27 percent of you are not very confident, 26 percent of you are getting more confident in facing these challenges, 36 percent of you feel very confident, but you expect to still learn more and finally, 11 percent of you are very confident in your ability to manage your chemicals in your buildings. So, we’re hoping we can change some of those numbers by the end of today’s webinar. So I love I want to thank all of our experts today for the information that you’re going to provide to this wonderful audience that we have. It’s my sincere pleasure to introduce our speakers today. Our first speaker will be Kristina Meson. She’s with my colleague here at the Environmental Protection Agency. She’s been working for the agency for over 19 years, working in the area of Hazardous Waste Management. She began her career at the Environmental Protection Agency as a regulation writer and is now the National Program Manager for the School Chemical Cleanout Campaign. Following Kristina, Francine Locke will be our next speaker. For the past five years, she has served as Director for the School District of Philadelphia’s office in the Environmental Management and Services. Prior to her work with the district, Francine served as an industrial hygienist for the city of Philadelphia’s Risk Management Director and as a Director of the Philadelphia’s Schools Office Environmental Management and Services; she provides environmental professional guidance and technical support to the district. And rounding out our speakers today will be Michelle Lusk. She is the Director of Environmental Affairs at the Cement Kiln Recycling Coalition, CKRC. They are a national trade association representing companies in the U.S. involved in recycling, energy bearing hazardous waste for the use of fuel in kilns that produce Portland cement. Michelle has been with CKRC for almost 20 years. So, thank you so much to all of our speakers and I’m going to go ahead and open up, turn it over to my colleague Kristina Meson and let’s get started. Kristina Meson: Thank you, Michele. Good afternoon. My name is Kristina Meson and I work with Schools Chemical Cleanout Campaign – also known as SC3. Today, I want to give you some perspective on the problem of mismanage chemicals in k-12 schools as well as talk about the SC3 Program and how school teams and program partners can contribute to making safer and healthier schools a reality. My goal for the next 15 minutes is to provide you with the information you need to integrate responsible chemical management into your Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program. If you’re a volunteer or a potential volunteer interested in partnering with a school, I hope to provide you with what you need to know to go to your schools and offer your assistance and meet your company’s social responsibility goals as well. It’s all part of the SC3 Program, part of the comprehensive Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools initiative. So, over the next 15 minutes, I’ll give you an overview of the program, layout some of the key elements of what an SC3 program can look like. We’ll talk about how to move towards action, I’ll share some insights and ideas and then, we’ll put it all together, so you feel prepared to go out and consider this as an option. So, why the big fuss about chemicals in schools? Well, chemical spills and accidents happen in schools across the nation more often than we care to think about it. And as a matter of fact, EPA estimates that 33,000 schools could benefit from the Schools Chemical Cleanout Campaign Program. All of us here share common outcomes that we’re looking for, whether we’re school administrators, industry experts or state and local agencies, no matter what your role, you probably agree that you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe that responsible chemical management of chemicals in K-12 schools is an important issue and it demands our attention. So to make sure that schools can responsibly manage their chemicals, we need to get rid of those chemicals that are outdated, unknown and unneeded. Just get the dangerous stuff out. We also need to raise awareness of chemical issues in schools and promote sustainable solution. Many people think immediately of the science laboratory when they think of dangerous chemicals, but there are chemicals throughout the schools. They are in the nurse’s office, they’re in the art classrooms; you even find some in the kitchen, also maintenance and cleaning. So, we need to raise that awareness. And then we want to prevent future mismanagement and future active through training curriculum change and long-term solutions and those are the goals of the SC3 Program. The Program is structured around two main components. The first is the SC3 website provides an electronic toolkit, which is jam-packed with helpful tools for creating or improving the school district responsible chemical management program. The tool kit includes the tools such as the short video to encourage decision makers to buy into a program, a workbook of tips, techniques and templates for building your program. It has backseat, best stories and links to other helpful information. The second component is the critical piece and you’ll here more about this from Michelle Lusk later in the presentation. This component is a volunteer partner network that EPA is building. EPA is building this national network of community volunteers who are interested in bringing their expertise and resources to schools to assist them in making responsible chemical management a reality. And this network can include the chemical industry, waste management industry, colleges and universities, fire departments, among others. All these people in the community really care about the school and the education of students. There’s even a special section on our website, just for partners. And schools are encouraged to look within their own communities to build their own partner network. OK, so you get it. There may be a lot of chemicals in your schools and we should consider how to manage them. But do you need to address this now? Is it a critical issue? I mean really, what’s the big deal? The next few slides will show actual situations down in K-12 schools. So, strap on your seatbelt because here we go. And you’ve been looking at one of the photos for a while. I’m hoping your thinking to yourself, “Metal something, what is that?” This photo was found in a high school science laboratory. Can anybody tell me what it’s in this bottle? Certainly, there’s no material safety data sheet for this one to help us figure out what it is. Yes, I don’t know what this one is either. It sure seems like it wasn’t stored very well. And I’m not sure that these paint cans should be stored next to the radiator heater. What do you think? Yes, I don’t think so. Storing corrosive on metal shelf could only lead to trouble. In the not too distant future, I predict that the third shelf from the bottom will give out and bottles will fall. I wonder what will happen when the chemicals in the broken bottle is mixed. I don’t know I don’t care to find out. You don’t want that situation in your school. Now, this one is interesting. You know filing your office papers alphabetically may be a really good idea, but don’t do this with your chemicals. When ammonia and bleach combine, they form a toxic gas. This photo was taken; I hate to say it, in a kindergarten classroom. OK, this is another poorly labeled chemical. It’s very comprehensive, you know, “waste everything.” I’m not quite sure how I would dispose of that or handle that, but I think I would treat it very carefully and my guess is it’s very dangerous to very expensive to dispose of. And what about this one? Five percent water and a skull and cross bone. I can’t imagine what the other 95 percent is, but that’s probably the part we need to know not that five percent is water. So, although these photos are all of chemicals that were found in laboratories because they tend to be our most dramatic – remember, again, the chemicals are not just found in science labs, they’re found throughout the school. OK, I couldn’t read this. This is a collection of my very favorite actual hazards that we’ve seen. In the top corner, you see some really pretty bottles that have these brilliant crystals around them. Those are crystallized ethers, they may be harmless, but some of them are shock sensitive. You move them even slightly and they’ll explode. This is an unknown, unattended chemical reaction. They didn’t come from your chemical supplier that way. You don’t want yours looking like that. The one below is light phosphorous, light phosphorous, when it’s exposed to the air, spontaneously combusts. If you look at this photo, there’s about half an inch or less before this one goes into flame. The one that is humorous to start with, but really is not because it could cost you millions of dollars to cleanup, is the cool-whip container. It's marked with HG, which some of us know means mercury and others of us do not. It clearly states because it feels with duct tape, but yes that is improper storage and labeling. And finally, the one that causes me great pause is the one in the upper right-hand corner. A bottle of nitric acid doesn’t look too dangerous, but you can see that the nitric acid it seems they’re escaping and they’re corroding the box. So, then right above that is cyanide. So, should those two combine for any reason you have a gas chamber. In this particular instance it was minutes that students would’ve been able to get out before disaster would’ve occurred. So, I could probably stop my presentation here. These pictures say a lot, but let’s talk about how this kind of thing happening in your school. I’m sure none of you want that; those photos on the front page of your newspaper. The illustration above shows the five steps for developing a responsible chemical management program. I’m just going to go through this very quickly. The slide is kind of small, so I’ll read what they say. Step one is to evaluate your needs, form a team and identify your goals for your program. Second, you would identify tasks that you want to accomplish and meet those goals. Third, you want to get the word out about the program, advertise it, get people involved, let people who are going to be around know what’s going on. Four, you want to implement your program, you actually want to take action. You want to start, you know, getting a sustainable program in place. And five, you want to sustain the program through evaluation and long-term activity. I’m not going to go into detail on these. There’s a lot of tools on our website that will really help you out on them and you’ll notice that these steps strongly correlate to the key drivers that the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program that you already have in place or are considering, which Michele reviewed earlier. So, as you’ll see from this overview and from the other speakers, SC3 is simply another piece of a comprehensive indoor air quality program. So, just like the tools, the Indoor of Air Quality Tools for Schools Program and almost any other effort you take that will affect other people; teamwork is the key to it all. The federal SC3 was predated and built upon the efforts of states, local and tribal governments and agencies. And we took a look at those programs and what we found is that the foundation of all these programs has been the formation of effective teams. SC3 team members can come from a range of background and should not be limited to those with the science background. Teams should include teachers, school administrators and maintenance personnel, likely the same great people you already have in your Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program and then, should include folks who care about the health of a school from the community. This could include waste handlers, chemical suppliers, fire and police, environment health education agencies. And most importantly SC3 teams should have a variety of perspective, like draw from broad array of expertise and resources that can contribute through addressing your school’s chemical management needs. It’s like the other components of comprehensive Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program there are many benefits to such a program to the school. By looking at the full lifecycle of chemicals in the school, from before they’re purchased to how they’ll be used and dispose of, both can save a lot of money on the purchase of disposal of the chemicals that they need to operate their schools. Schools can also reduce the use of potentially dangerous chemicals and that reduces the exposure of students and the staff to these chemicals into potential accidents and that’s what we really care about. And a good program can prevent dangerous and costly spills and releases that result in reduction of loss school days and we know that when children are not in school, they’re not learning and we want them to be in school learning. You can also reduce your liability and a loss of public confidence when you know what chemicals you have in your school and you know how they’re being managed, and what really matters, you’ll be making your schools safer for students and for staff. Similarly, there are many benefits to the community partner. By assisting schools with their chemical management program, you’re organization not only helps prevent fires and spills and protect the environment, protect the health of those who reside in the school, but you also can have pride and satisfaction from improving your school health and safety and that’s probably what we hear from our partners the most - that the benefit they enjoy the most. You can gain an enhanced image as a community leader; you will get local and federal EPA recognition and organization visibility within your own sector and your community. So, if you take a look at this photo, you can see the partnership produce results. It takes a team, partnerships from within and outside the school. Just compare this photograph to the one we saw earlier. I think this is the one you want on the front page of your newspaper. And a few key points to remember when planning your program, there’s no secret formula, no one sites that solve solution to make in responsible chemical management part of a school district’s culture. Every school is unique; just as the people within them are. You want to simplify, build on healthy schools environments programs you already have in place such as your integrated pest management program, Tools for Schools or HealthySEAT. The SC3 component, like others in your indoor air quality program, are flexible, so you can create a program that meets your needs, work with your team, find the solution that work for you right now, build on your program as you’re able. So, as a school professional, you know the basics now. You have a plan for creating your school teams and your teams of external partners. How do you prepare to work with those volunteers from outside of your school? What do they need to know to commit to action along side of you? We found that organizations are generally supportive of and share the goals of the SC3 program. They’re often enthusiastic and eager to learn how they can assist, but they have a business to run and must know what type of commitment they’re making in support of a goal, so be prepared with good information to help partners assess if and how they can help out. We have some information here on a slide that you want to think about - where are your chemicals, what conditions are they in, how many facilities are effective, how many students and staff. There’s more you should know before you talk to a partner. You should have support of your leadership to pursue a program, you should have an idea what assistance you want, you should have a timeframe for your planning process and when you want to carry out each of the steps towards your goals of safer school and you should at least have envisioned an SC3 team for your school or school district. And if you’re a non-school organization, but want to take action to make your neighborhood school safe – well, good for you. We’re really happy about that. Before approaching the schools, you should consider how you might assist and whether you have management support. Where is your organization located? Are you a local facility or do you have facilities nationwide? Has your organization ever worked with a school or school district? You have contacts there that you can call upon to get started, to integrate into the school’s program? What types of expertise can you offer to a school and what other organizations can you enlist to build a partnership team? For instance, if you’re a chemical manufacturer and you have expertise in doing chemical inventories. Do you have also waste management company that you work with who may want to provide their services free of charge to the school as well? Just think about who else you can have on your team. All right, I know you all want to get started, so I’m going to tell you how. The first place to go is the EPA website for SC3. It’s listed there on your screen, write it down. Like I said before, there are all kinds of tools on there to take you step by step on the things you consider for creating your own unique plan as part of your Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program. And what I particularly want you to do is to checkout the ‘where you live’ page. There you’ll sign EPA folks in your region of the country, who are knowledgeable and experience working with schools. You’re experience with working with the tool kit and with partnerships and they’re available to chat with you by email or telephone to answer your questions or brainstorm ideas for your particular situation. Please contact them and get yourself started. They’re amazing people. You can also contact me any time. My information is up on the screen now. Contact me any time after the webinar concludes with further questions you may have thought about in the days ahead and then, you know let us know if you, you know what you want to do to get started. I want to thank you for your time. I want you to enjoy the rest of the webinar; I know that you will. And next, you will hear from Francine Locke about the Philadelphia School District Program. Francine? Francine Locke: Thanks, Kristina. Good afternoon. My name is Francine Locke and again, I’m the Director of the School District of Philadelphia the Office of Environmental Management and Services. Today, I want to describe how our district has designed a successful chemical management program as part of an indoor air quality or indoor environmental quality program. We’ve been supported by the EPA, numerous stakeholders, consultants and other school districts as mentors and I hope I can pass along some information to everyone here about what we’ve done. I also want to set the stage before I begin with everybody involve with indoor air quality should really have the Tools for Schools Program at their fingertips because it does set a framework for how to do this. And also, every single person has to really be able to imagine that every classroom, no matter where it is can have indoor environmental quality excellence and that is our goal with the School District of Philadelphia. Our profile as a school district is that we’re a large urban district. We have about a 163,000 students, 24,000 staff members including teachers and maintenance of facility staff members. We have 433 facilities that include leased facilities and daycare centers, administrative offices. We’re actually the ninth largest district in the nation by enrollment, and we actually just opened two new schools this year and they are both LEED certified. My next slide is about our EPA self-disclosure audit that we’ve been involved with. Our chemical management program was developed as the result of a voluntary EPA self-disclosure audit that we started in 2008.The audit covered our Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, also known as AHERA, and multimedia programs. Just this month, we completed the AHERA portion of the audit, and we’re continuing forward with the multimedia portion. This audit has actually strengthened our district’s overall environmental management program and has given birth to other new programs including universal waste and underground storage tank management. This experience has been a positive one for us and we recommend that other districts and industry consider participating in EPA’s voluntary audit programs. The next slide, as you may know, recent literature has clearly illustrated that healthful and safe learning environment significantly impacts student academic performance. Because this district has one primary goal to provide every student with an excellent education, we recognize the need for a comprehensive indoor environmental quality program. To give you some background, over the past year, a proactive program was designed with the mission of ensuring that each facility’s environment is helpful and conducive to teaching and learning here in our district. After attending the most recent EPA Tools for Schools Symposium in Washington, D.C. last January, our district has worked hard to turn this goal into a reality, the goal of being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to indoor environmental health and safety issues. We were inspired at the Symposium by other district stories and listen what others had to say about how their programs work. With the support of our Regional EPA Indoor Air Quality Program contact, Christina Schulingkamp – she’s wonderful – and stakeholders including the Philadelphia Federation of Teacher’s Union, Health and Welfare Fund. We reached the point now, where we are ready to launch a comprehensive IEQ management program this very month. Prior to this, we had many pieces of the program, which many of you also probably have from integrated pest management to universal waste to underground storage tank to general IEQ. But we needed guidance on how to put all the puzzle pieces together to create a solid overall proactive IEQ program. This presentation will focus on the chemical management component of the program. Our performance indicator for this program is a number of IEQ issues at each school, measuring this indicator will allow us to monitor progress with the program. The target indicator of progress for our program is zero IEQ issues at every school and this is definitely a manageable target and we want everyone to actually – to be able to really imagine every single classroom throughout their district, throughout their community as being an Indoor Environmental Quality Excellent School. This includes chemical management issues. The chemical management component of our master IEQ program was launched over a year ago, so we’ve been doing our chemical management component for awhile, just a year. This included putting the chemical management program into a written living document, training staff members, inventorying in chemicals, disposing of chemicals, labeling them, reorganizing and more. This presentation will describe the key points that have helped us accomplish these tasks. And over the next year, we plan to measure the overall programs performance including chemical management indicators to quantify our progress. We plan to identify facilities with IEQ issues that are in need of our support as well as those that illustrate IEQ excellence and set best practice standards. I hope many of you will attend the next EPA IAQ Tools for Schools Symposium this coming January as we will provide an update on how our overall program is progressing. The key components – that’s the next slide. I am stunned that some school districts present at today’s webinar do have a chemical management program based on the SC3 program and do not have consultants doing a lot of the work involved with their program. As you will see throughout this presentation, our district does use consultants to help with this work. However, we want to encourage having a proactive approach to chemical management whether you can afford to pay a consultant or have to do it yourself. As another support resource, we reached out to a mentoring school district, the Baltimore County Public School District, who has helped us tremendously over the past nine months with our overall Indoor Environmental Quality Program. The EPA, as well as industry standard setting organizations, were also used as references for the program. Some of these are provided at the end of our presentation. You should consider tapping into the SC3 program for industry partners as Kristina said because they can really help support your district. Our written plan is actually – our written chemical management program is 734 pages long and we expect that it will change overtime because it’s a living document. That 734 pages includes all of the material safety data sheets for our approved chemicals. We have over 200 approved chemicals. The plan has all of our PowerPoint presentation slides that we gave to our training staff and it has all of the ins and outs of the program. I will only outline the key components here that we believe maybe helpful to you. The first thing is put your program in writing and make sure you provide periodic reviews and changes that reflect feedback from your staff; provide training and a copy of the written program to a representative at every facility; include teachers and facilities management staff; create an approved chemical list, which I’ll talk about in the next slide, create a material safety datasheet book and have an electronic version of that information and you should make sure that every facility has a copy of your written document. OK. Next slide is we have found that the Philadelphia Fire Department was very helpful and eager to provide guidance to our district about labels for cabinets, closets and even for rooms that house closets such as hallway entrances into lavatories. The Philadelphia Fire Department provided input on how signage for their ease in identifying chemical storage areas in the event of an emergency and where MSDS book should be located in each facility. It sounds like a no brainer, main office or in the lavatory, but there are sometimes that Philadelphia Fire Department or your local fire department may have a preference because they’re familiar with the configuration of the building and the streets, so their feedback was really helpful. We provided our fire department with CDs that have all of our approved chemicals and the MSDS, so they have those in hand and they know that out of the 400 and some schools throughout our district, throughout our city, they have the material safety datasheet for all of our approved chemicals. And we meet with our Philadelphia Fire Department quarterly to discuss our chemical management program and other safety and health issues in our school. The next step is determining. This is actually a very important piece that took us some time to figure out. It sounds simple, but determining the criteria for removing chemicals from a facility’s inventory, from a chemistry lavatory, from a building engineer’s office storage area. The first is if you have poor, deteriorated, damaged storage containers, that’s you know, you get rid of those chemicals. That’s one of the criteria for removing a chemical. Next is an unlabeled container. That gets disposed of properly, meaning you don’t just throw it in the trash, but it needs to be taken out by someone who can test it and dispose of it properly. Unapproved chemicals, since we have an approved chemical list, we have to make sure that that is something that needs to be taken out of a lavatory or another chemical storage area and expired outdated chemicals that is the fourth criteria and for removing from a facility. The next slide is we used an environmental consultant to identify, inspect and inventory all of our chemical storage areas. We started with high school science laboratories, next we moved to art programs, maintenance closets and boiler rooms. This initial inspection step creates a baseline for each facility’s chemical inventory. Corrective actions must be addressed in a timely fashion, including properly lab packing and exposing of chemicals. And at that point, you want to also start to see that this school going to have a continuous need for pickup because of the programs they have in place, so you need to work with them and make sure that they have a mechanism for carefully storing those waste, having a cycle for pickups so that it’s done safely and properly. The next slide, we also have to make sure that we restrict the purchase of unapproved chemicals and also large quantities of any chemical. There’s no need for huge amounts of chemical that we can purchase periodically and have fresh stock of. And unapproved chemicals - trying to restrict the purchase of those through your central administrative office through your procurement office is a very good thing to do. And so a mechanism should also be in place to add new chemicals to the approved chemical list and needs to be able to be revised academic programs. OK. The next slide is about our approved chemical list. This is really a huge piece to our program because once you know what you can and can’t have is very helpful. We have 284 chemicals. In order to maintain a proper chemical storage inventory at every facility, we needed to develop an approved chemical list. This really set the stage for allowing everyone to know which chemicals were allowed and which were not. Our approved chemical list was created to a risk assessment performed by an environmental consultant. She reviewed our district’s academic curriculum needs, so as guidance from chemical hygiene experts and collaborated with our academic leaders to ensure that the highest level of curriculum needs were still met while keeping our students safe. This is important because some of our schools are specifically focused on science, engineering, art and other areas and some even partner with universities and require higher level chemicals for their experimentation. The next slide, proper chemical label and storage, many of our audit findings were related to the alphabetical storage of chemicals. As Kristina mentioned, you know bleach next to ammonia, it might be easy for accessibility, but of course this is a no-no for chemical storage. Rather chemicals must be segregated by hazard classification. We initiated that the chemical labeling and storage system based on hazard class and color coding. As you can see here in the slide, our approved chemicals are grouped by class and listed on a large label and the appropriate hazard class is color coded and located at the top of the label. This storage labels were provided to each lab facility and are used for chemical storage units such as shelves and cabinets. These labels take desk work out of which chemicals belong to which hazard, of course, proper ventilation in storage cabinet design must be used for the specific hazard classes. All chemical containers must be labeled, even water, and labels must be colorfast and permanent. The next slide is about labeling storage areas. The Philadelphia Fire Department advised our district to label entrance ways to labs and classrooms as I said earlier. The NFPA or the National Fire Protection Association, the – diamond – and the NHMIS, the Hazardous Material Information Rating System are posted on classroom entrance ways that have lavatories and storage areas within in them. The philosophy is this signage is to allow the fire department to know exactly which chemical hazards are inside a room before they enter it in the event of an emergency. A different label is used for the chemical storage closets and prep rooms that are located inside of our classrooms and labs. We use a danger sign indicating that a student should not enter this area. Our goal is to prevent children from interacting with chemicals without adult supervision with that signage. OK and the next slide, inventory. When we started inventorying the district over a year ago, we found storage areas in schools with chemicals that have been stored for years and have become outdated and deteriorated including containers of liquid mercury. We even found radioactive button sources originating from a bomb shelter built under a high school. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Radiation Protection program that radioactive source was safely removed at no cost to the district. It would have cost us $12,000. Because of the unknown hazards involved with baseline inventorying of chemical storage areas, you may need to use professional services like we did. I do recommend that. They can develop a disposal list with all of the proper information needed for each chemical. They can lab pack the old deteriorated chemicals, label the waste and even track the waste to the approved disposal facility. Students should never be involved with inventorying chemicals. Do not move any unmarked, bulging, leaking, rusted, cracked or degraded chemical containers yourself unless you’ve been trained and know how to do that. During and after this process, of course, staff must be informed of the chemicals that were removed, those that remained and going forward, which they can and can’t have. Beware of donations also from industry and universities, and I mean usually they’re very careful, but we have to be careful with what we’re receiving, so we’re aware of how it needs to be handled and dispose of properly. I highly recommend tapping into SC3 for industry partners with regards to inventory. The next slide, waste disposal process. Of course, the waste disposal process must be described in your chemical management program. Our district reaches out to buildings that have reoccurring waste and we provide periodic pickups that are incorporated when possible into our universal waste cycle of pickups for fluorescent light bulbs and batteries. Again, for certain aspects of waste disposal, you should probably use a professional consultant. Just a recap of the key components, we must enforce that only approved chemicals exist inside our district buildings to ensure that students, staffs and visitors are protected from hazardous chemicals. Staff must maintain a current chemical inventory at each storage location, so be prepared for emergencies. We have to ensure that we the most current material safety datasheets in every building and easily recognizable where they’re at and we must demand that all chemicals are properly labeled and stored, and we have to make sure we have proper chemical disposal procedures in place. Last part of the recap here, it starts with just saying begin your program with a baseline assessment at each facility and have established criteria for approved chemicals; provide trainings to teachers and staff; to sustain the program, there must be a district person or office designated as the responsible party for updating the overall program and the approved chemical list as needed to support the needs of – the evolving needs of academic curriculum, which is our priority in addition to safety and health. Consider participating in the EPA self-disclosure voluntary audit program to help identify areas and need of programmatic development within your organization. I highly recommend that because it was really a positive experience for us; tap into your SC3 programs, your EPA SC3 Program partners. And at the end of this presentation, our results so far since we started this program about a year ago, we have found a significant decrease in the number of emergency hazmat responses to chemical spills in our buildings. Over a year ago, we responded to multiple spills of known substances and in some case, we were unsure of the actual chemical spill because it originated in an unlabeled container. This is a huge response for a school district involving the fire department hazmat unit, when we don’t know what was spilled. I believe the reduction in responses is directly related to the fact that we have removed and properly disposed of many chemicals from storage areas throughout the district and we provided training to our staff members about the program. Also our universal waste management program has eliminated mass storing of reoccurring building waste such as fluorescent light bulbs, which contain mercury. I encourage districts and schools to reach out to other districts that already have a plan in place for assistance and ideas. And I also recommend going to your regional EPA office and talk to them about the specific programs that they have for indoor air, asthma, radon, lead, PCBs, there’s a lot of great resources with the EPA. And just to close, I have to say that please remember to imagine Indoor Environmental Quality Excellence for every classroom. Michele Curreri: And I think our next speaker is Michelle from the Cement Kiln and Recycling Coalition. Michelle Lusk: Thank you, Michele. Good afternoon, everyone. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to talk to you about how industry has partnered with the Schools Chemical Cleanout Campaign to make a difference in our school. Next slide, please. As it was mentioned before, my industry trade association represents cement manufacturers in the United States that recycle the value and energy bearing waste by using in this fuel kilns that produce Portland cement. Every year for the past 20 years, we have been able to conserve one million tons of natural resources, like coal, by recycling the energy value in this ways. In addition, the industry has reused approximately 48 million scrap tires as a fuel to conserve an additional 847,000 tons of coals per year. My membership is also made up of those companies that collect, process, manage and market waste drive fuel for use in cement kilns. Next slide. In a nutshell, my member companies have chemical and waste management expertise as well as a strong desire to make a positive difference in their community. When EPA launched this SC3 Program, I was immediately drawn to it on a personal level. I’m a mother of three boys, I’m an environmental professional and I currently serve as the president of my elementary school’s Parent Teacher Association. Next slide. Of course, SC3 goals to remove unnecessary chemicals from sensitive environments facilitate responsible chemical management and raise awareness of chemical risks that all levels in our schools is exciting, but the multifaceted partnership approach to getting the job done was the icing the on the cake for me. The program is unique and it gives industry partners with a strong community service philosophy, the ability to donate time and resources to help facilitate a school cleanup. Next slide, please. When you learn about the extent of the risks posed by harmful chemicals in schools across the countries, the task at hand can seem daunting knowing that you cannot do everything to cleanup every school can paralyze some entities to the point that they don’t do anything. What we have to do as SC3 proponents is make sure that this initial reaction does not actually become a barrier to the SC3 involvement. The message that needs to be communicated to potential SC3 partners is that any contribution that you make to the partnership, whether it’s big or small, facilitates the success of the effort to cleanup the school and every school that is cleaned up brings us one step closer to reaching all the schools in need. SC3 does this by bringing together a variety of partners with different expertise and resources to realize its goal. In the next slide, you’ll see a picture of the cleanup that several of my members participated in a high school in Grandview, Missouri. One of my member companies, Tradebe, Pollution Control Industrie,s or PCI, took the lead on this cleanup and there expertise was crucial. One of the challenges that was a disposal were a can of ether that can be highly explosive if it is not handled properly. Next slide. CKRC became a charter member of the SC3 in 2007. And as the Trade Association Charter member and personally, as an SC3 champion, our goals were threefold. One, educate, encourage and facilitate number companies to get involve; two, serve as a proponent of the SC3 Program within my membership and beyond as demonstrated by participation in today’s webinar; and three, my overall goal is to get every CKRC member company involve in an SC3 project in some way in our future. Next slide. As you can see on the next slide, U.S. EPA organized an exciting charter member ceremony back in 2007. The event brought representatives from U.S. CPA, the U.S. Department of Education together with industry charter members, teachers and students to be recognized as a school where a successful cleanup had actually occurred. As you can see in the photos, we were honored with a plaque and in conjunction with this event, it was really terrific, the school organized a science fair and we enjoyed the tour of the science projects on display as well as the opportunity to interact with the students there at the high school. Next slide. At this point in my presentation, I’d like to highlight some of the tremendous work that my members have done as SC3 partners. I want to emphasize again the point I made earlier, any contribution that a partner can make, big or small, is essential to each success of any cleanup. SC3 partners have participated at a variety of levels to facilitate these successes. My examples will cover that range. CKRC’s most active SC3 members to date is Tradebe. Their successes have totaled a cleanup of seven schools and over 19,000 pounds of chemicals. In one junior high, they cleaned up a 159 individual chemical containers. In a school orphanage, miscellaneous chemicals approximately 10 to 55 gallon drums containing lab packs were cleaned out. Next slide, they also participated in some cleanups in the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, 245 individual chemical containers were cleaned out of one school there. In a high school on the reservation 921 individual chemical containers. Next slide, and at this high school that’s in the picture here, Dupree High School on the reservation, 439 individual chemical containers were cleaned out. Next slide, please. This slide shows a cleanup in process at Grandview High School in Grandview, Missouri. Three of my member companies, Tradebe, Ash Grove Cement Company and Cadence Environmental Services joined forces and cleaned up 440 individual chemical containers. Chemicals that were lab packed were flammable, mercury and mercuric compounds, oxidizers, acids and poison inhalation hazards. This effort was particularly exciting because it was done under the umbrella of President Obama’s United We Serve call, where he was challenging all Americans to join in a volunteer effort to be a part of building a new foundation for America one community at a time. My final example is a member company Giant Cement. They have partnered with a school and have been reviewing that school’s chemical management program, educating the school and staff and making them aware of the school’s needs to be cognizant of the materials that they store and handle. They continue to remain “on-call” to this school should they have any questions or need any help. Next slide, please. At this point, you may be wondering to yourself, “What draws these industry partners to a program like SC3?” Quite simply, it’s the children; it’s a desire to help the community and the opportunity to use their expertise to make a difference in the schools. Next slide. I’d like to share with you some of the views expressed by participating SC3 members and these are quotes from actual participants that have been involved in cleanups. “It is always about the children to protect them as it hazardous waste facility, we understand the potential consequences when hazardous chemicals are inaccurately characterized and mismanaged. The dangers of these chemicals are not always fully understood by well-meaning inexperienced individuals. To minimize, eliminate the consequences and cost stemming from potential mismanagement, we want to be involved as good corporate citizens.” “For the benefit of the community and schools and students, it seems like the right thing to do.” Another quote, “During our visit to the school, we walked through school and saw the children talking and laughing and waiting for class to start, then we entered a separate storage room full of old chemicals, which was close in proximity to children and easily accessible to those children. This was daunting. Further, thinking to myself, how could some of these schools ever afford the proper handling disposal of these chemicals and considering how long they would have remained there have we not cleaned them out? Also, during and after the cleanup, it was so wonderful to see and hear how the children and administrators took pride in their school. It was truly an awesome experience.” Next slide. Here are a few more quotes. “One of the companies we work with showed interest in providing technical expertise for a project, That same company was willing to move forward in a partnership with us and enabled us to commit resources at a not to exceed level. We were not able to handle the wide variety of ways that can come from a cleanup. Once this idea of partnering to use the resources each of us had to offer was flushed out, we were ready to get involved. The project was in our community.” In the slide that you are looking at right now, it’s Grandview High School and I detailed that cleanup earlier, where three of my member companies joined together with environmental agency, the school administrators and staff and local groups and had a successful cleanup and then one of member help facilitate a tree planting ceremony afterwards to celebrate the successful cleanup. It was truly a great experience for everyone involved. Next slide. Now, that I have shared with you some of the reasons behind getting involved, I’d like to highlight some of the various preventing institutes from getting involved with the SC3 projects. You can go to the next slide, please. Some of those include finding a key contact in school to make it happen. People often find themselves waiting on return phone calls and emails and the time identifying and developing these projects can be extensive. As a PTA president at my son’s school, I know firsthand how overcommitted teachers and administrators are in all of our schools. There’s hardly enough time to dedicate to their most important job, which is to educate our children. If schools are interested in SC3, but don’t have a person specifically designated to coordinate the efforts, I might suggest reaching out to your Parent Teacher Association or to retired teachers or active community volunteers, who have a heart for volunteering. They may be able to act as a contact, key contacts, coordinator to help get your effort going and make contact with potential partners. Another barrier can be cost, regrettably, we are all experiencing tighter budget in this recession and finding extra money to support these programs can be very difficult. Partnering is key. The Grandview cleanup I described earlier would not have been possible without three industry companies partnering together to make it happen. Also, some willing partner companies don’t have the expertise, capabilities that others do to handle a wide variety of waste coming from some cleanups. So, matching partners with complementary resources and skill sets is crucial to the success. And finally, sometimes we see that schools are uncomfortable with the model agreement for SC3 and seem apprehensive to get involved. I really encourage to reach out to U.S. EPA to gain a better understanding of the partnership agreement and perhaps offer suggestions to make the agreement more acceptable to you and your school. Next slide. As a trained educator myself, I would like to close my presentation with the four R’s to motivate involvement in the SC3. I just couldn’t resist and I might add that these are all applicable to all the various different partners that make these programs successful, not just industry partners. Next slide. They are reality, resources, recognition and relationships. Get potential partners out to the schools to see for themselves the needs that is real and encourage and facilitate partnerships by approaching companies with a specific project in mind for their community. As you’ve heard earlier from the quotes from member companies that has been involved in cleanups, understanding that these problems are real and sometimes actually seeing first hand what needs to be done is a tremendous motivator to get them involved. We also suggest creating some sort of an online project clearing house by region or state or perhaps even by community to help match out potential partners with schools in need. Another is the resources; enable companies to participate in these cleanups with a guarantee of the amount of resources that they will contribute. It would be nice for them to be able to go into a project knowing what they have to offer and understanding that will be acceptable to complete the project. Give the companies involved the means to express the total commitment of resources that they will give in advance. Also find ways to direct state resources towards programs. Next slide. Recognition, as you heard from my members, the primary reason that they get involved with these projects is because they are compassionate about community service and making their schools safer. It’s about the children, but I am – I have a strong desire and passion for volunteering too, and as a volunteer, I know that I personally like to hear that my efforts are appreciated, recognized and that people are grateful for our involvement in whatever the project was. So, it’s important that once the cleanup has taken place, companies and schools that are involved are recognize perhaps a letter or a certificate of completion is a great way to acknowledge the efforts made to cleanup these schools. Also, hosting or organizing events to recognize these successes is tremendous. EPA has done a great job in this area. In this slide that you have in front of you right now, you see a picture of an award ceremony that U.S. EPA put together back in 2009. This ceremony brought together various levels of environmental protection agency representatives, industry partners, school staff and students. It was a tremendous way to celebrate our SC3 successes to date and U.S. EPA officials were in attendance. In fact, Administrator Jackson, taped remarks for the group because she cannot be there on person to let us know how proud she was on the SC3 Program and all the efforts that people had put forth to have successful cleanups. Also, relationships are key. At cleanups and recognition events, it’s important to foster networking not only among the partners that were currently involve in that project but also potential partners. Invite people to observe what’s happening at the school and to be a part of this recognition event to motivate them to get involve in some way. Also, encourage maintenance of these relationships and develop them through – that you develop through the cleanups and the building of new relationships. Relationships and networking are key to expanding the SC3 project across our nation. Next slide. CKRC is proud to be an SC3 partner and we look forward to being a part of the continued success and growth of this unique program that unites industry, regulators and educators who seek to make our schools safer and the future brighter for our children. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon. Michele Curreri: Thank you, Michelle, so much and thank you to all of our speakers for wonderful information, detailed information to help all of our participants either start or continue with their chemical management programs in their school. I’m going to go ahead and jump right into the next polling question. What additional resources do you need to design and implement your school chemical cleanout campaign program component as part of your indoor air quality management program? We’re going to open up the polls. And what we found is almost a tie. About 38 percent of you are looking for some fact sheets on chemical safety management and about 35 percent of you are looking for additional training opportunities. So, we’re going to make sure that our sister program and Schools Chemical Cleanout Campaign Program has this information and hopefully they’ll be able to get some of this stuff done for you guys. So, we’ve got one last polling question, which is what steps will you take after attending this webinar to incorporate the SC3 activities into your IAQ management program. So, the polls are open. And I am very glad to see that that 67 percent of you are going to use the resources available on the website. And about 15 percent of you are going to reach out to potential partners in their community, so these are good numbers. Thank you so much everyone for participating in these polls, great information that will be passed on to the Schools Chemical Cleanout Program. We’re going to start to wrap things up right now. Here’s some resources on EPA Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program. Our main website is there, where you can get all of this information. We hope that you guys will also consider taking down this information as describe to our electronic newsletter, comes out about once a month. It has hot topics and emerging research and the best processes are included, topics like that are included in there. To subscribe to this, just send an email to IAQTFSconnector@cadmusgroup.com and hit the subscribe on the subject line and they’ll be glad to go ahead and sign you up. We also have Tools for Schools Connector listserv, again, a wonderful place for you to get your questions answered from your peers. You share a question on there and we often find that very quickly, you’ll get lots of responses and lots of help and assistance from your peers in the school community. Finally, again, the presentations from this webinar and all our other webinars can be found on our website. You can download the presentations, which are often link with the audios, so if you want to share this with some of your colleagues who weren’t able to join today. So, it will be just like they were there. So, we’re going to go on to the next slide. For all of your resource needs for EPA Schools Chemical Cleanout program, you could go to their website www.epa.gov/SC3 to get information on all of their resources. And then finally, just a few reminders, the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools National Competitive Awards Program, those award applications are due no later than Friday, October 8th. You can go to our website to get more information. And registration for the 2011 Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools National Symposium that Francine mentioned a little bit earlier in our presentation is open. We encourage all of you to go to the website and register for the Symposium. We’ve got a few questions that we’re going to go ahead and answer now. We’ve leave up on the screen our contact information. So, our first question is going to go to Kristina Meson with EPA Schools Chemical Cleanout program and that is, “Where can I find a sample chemical management plan or advice on performing a chemical inventory?” Kristina Meson: To find out that kind of information, I would refer you to the SC3 website. You have that address and specifically, I would look in what we call the workbook. It has a really long name up the front, Building Successful Programs, which is the name of our series of tools and there’s one called a Workbook. I would go in there. It has tips, templates and techniques for doing an inventory. It has sample chemical management plans. Take a look there and you’ll find something that you need and then of course, go to where you live page and contact your regional rep and they will help you out. Michele Curreri: Thank you so much. OK, our next question, Francine is for you. Actually there are two parts to the question, “You’ve got a very successful chemical management going on. What was your basis for starting that program and you’ve really dropped the number of incidents that you’re having, how are you determining that basis that you’re on – that you’ve dropped those incidents and what is the relevant role of the rules regarding chemical management in your district?” So that’s the first part we’ll let you answer, and then we’ll go on to the second part. Francine Locke: All right. The basis of our chemical management program, I mean number one we knew we needed one because we have chemicals out there. There’s a lot of information available. Tools for Schools, you know, mentioned that point source has initiated that we need to address the EPA self-audit, really brought it to life that we need to make sure our waste is disposed of properly and it just evolve into inventorying every schools for chemicals and so that’s how we initiated the program, why we initiated it. I think the other question was about what are the rules in our area, in our city, Philadelphia. We basically have – there’s a lot of different things. We deal with the EPA regulations for this. There’s no local regulation for the chemical management program. Michele Curreri: Yes. Francine Locke: In fact, the only thing that’s really regulated would be – the Philadelphia Fire Department, they do have some regulations. But we basically follow the general storage by classification through standards like NSPA standard and the EPA guidance and for waste disposal, however, that’s federal and state regulatory requirement. That makes any sense? Michele Curreri: It does, thank you very much. And then we had quite a few questions on and this will open up to all three of the ladies. We have quite a few questions on disposal of a particular chemicals. So, I’ll just throw that out there. Where are the procedures for proper disposal of lavatory waste? One person really talked about – and another part of that is preventing acid from leaking from the sealed containers. So, we’ll deal with the first part of that is about proper disposal, where can you find that information and then, what are some best practices from preventing acid from leaking from sealed containers? Kristina Meson: One of the best places to look for proper disposals of your chemicals is on the material safety datasheet that come with each chemical. It tells you the various characteristics of the chemical, how to store it and how to dispose of it. Now, sometimes what the MSDS, which is the acronym, says to do is consult your local state or federal regulations and if that’s what you need to do, go to your state agency that deals with environmental regulations and they can help you walk through that. And when you’re looking at storing chemicals, the question came up for acids, but with all chemicals, you should always make sure that your container is compatible with the chemical that you’re storing. So, whether it’s an acid or something else, you want to make sure that the two are compatible. And remember that containers and their lids also have a functional lifetime and so for instance, the red cap with the nitric acid that was leaking through, that might have been an appropriate container, but it’s past its useful is just the lifespan, so look for those things when you store your chemicals. Michele Curreri: Great. Anything else to add? All right. Michelle, we’ve gotten quite a few questions geared towards you, but I’ll kind of wrap them up into one question, which is if I’m in school district, how can I find an industry partner that I can contact directly, one that is already committed to working on these types of programs? So, how can we find more of you out there? Michelle Lusk: Right. The best way and Kristina, feel free to step in, is to take your need to your SC3 champion in your region or area or at U.S. EPA and let them know that you’re a school interested in partnering and that is how we have ended up matching up our industry partners with particular schools and need. Because as I showed, some of my member companies, I mean many of them did work on projects in their own communities, but some have even gone outside the community. So, EPA at the SC3, people on the SC3 team know about the abilities and willingness of their SC3 partners to work either in communities or outside and can help match up the appropriate people with the appropriate need because it also depends on the extent of what needs to be done at the school. Is it nearly a review of, you know, sorting, reviewing, looking at this storage areas and what’s there, does an actual cleanup need to take place, education, waste disposal, etc. Kristina Meson: That’s right, Michelle. This is Kristina. The only thing I would add is that, you know, schools can also look within their own community. They can look to the industries that might help them buy their science equipments or sponsor science fairs or go to the Chamber of Commerce or your local Emergency Planning Committee and there maybe partners right within your own neighborhood that we are not aware of. Michelle Lusk: And just to add to that Kristina, just because a particular industry is not currently an SC3 partner, I think it would go a long way if particular school in a community went to a potential industry partner and said, “Have you heard about the SC3 Program, it’s really something we’d like to be involved with and we’d like to partner with you,” and reach out and introduce them to SC3 that way. Michele Curreri: Great. Thank you so much. And then we’re going to have one final question. Francine, this is for you. Many districts have wondered - they’ve tried unsuccessfully to get through superintendent to pay attention to this type of issue or to get their support for this. Do you have any words of advice that the people on the call today can take back to their own school district to get support from the superintendent? Francine Locke: Fortunately, we have a senior vice president of our Capital Programs that has been extremely supportive and helping us to get that message to our superintendent’s office, having a strong leader in the department that you work for who speaks to the superintendent, going through your resolution process, through your board or SRC, School Reform Commissions, what we have here were actually – were managed through a state. But to be honest with you, we are still in the developmental stage of presenting a package as a total indoor environmental quality program. That large sophisticated program that manages all of our indoor environmental quality issues including the component of chemical management and IPM and you know, every indoor environmental quality issue. We’re about to present that to our superintendent. So, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a grassroots sort of operation here, where we’ve had the support of the leadership from our department through, you know, through him and so, we’re about to actually take it to our superintendent level and we’re trying to make it a little bit bigger - get it on her radar. So, my recommendation for other districts is to create a program the best you can with the resources you have and then display that and illustrate it to your superintendent, which was what we’re about to do and that’s where we’re at. Michele Curreri: Great. Thank you so much. I’m going to turn it over to my colleague Kristina Meson and then we’re going to close it out. Kristina Meson: This is Kristina. I actually wanted to add what Francine was talking about because sometimes it’s really hard to get the people who make the decisions involved. On the website, you can download a copy of the SC3 video. The video is 14 minutes long, which is little longer than a superintendent’s attention span – I hope there aren’t any superintendents on the phone. They don’t have a lot of time. It’s a short video and it is aimed directly at decision makers and it talks about the reasons why a SC3 Program is really important to the health of a school district. So, I suggest that you take a look at that. We also have some presentations on the website that you can take and steal shamelessly to make your own presentation to give to your superintendents. Francine Locke: Can I add one more thing, this is Francine Locke. Michele Curreri: Yes, go ahead. Francine Locke: We actually have been participating with the American Association of School Administrators, the Urban and Rural Healthy Coalition and Michele - we just went to something in Memphis that was fantastic. They are a conduit to speaking to our superintendent and they have also been supportive of getting the message to our superintendents. So, I advise everyone to try and get involved with the AASA in addition to the EPA. Michele Curreri: Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, thank you again to all of our speakers and to all of our participants today. IAQ Tools for Schools Webinar Transcription – Schools Chemical Cleanout September 15, 2010