Superintendent Tony Knight has implemented a district-wide policy of classrooms using herbal remedies, rather than toxic pesticides or herbicides, to ward away pests, including insects and mice.

To execute this new “Integrated Pest Management” system, the maintenance staff put together and placed “green buckets” in each classroom. Each bucket contains organic pest-control solutions, including cinnamon sticks and peppermint oil, which contain chemicals created by the plants that deter pests from eating them.

“The location of the Oak Park School District, surrounded by open space, puts us in a position where [pest management] is particularly important,” Knight wrote in an email. “We do not want to be responsible for the death or injury of wildlife from these substances.”

Knight said the school district has not used natural pest repellents for many years, but this new policy brings them into practice.

“Most importantly, the board holds the well-being of our students and staff first, and therefore will not allow the use of known carcinogens or toxic or potentially toxic substances to be used where our students and staff work and play,” Knight wrote.

Winnie Litten, a biology teacher, said she supports this new policy.

“I think anytime we reduce the amount of [toxic] chemicals that students are exposed to is a good thing,” Litten said.

Litten said she hasn’t had to use her green bucket yet, but she trusts the judgment of the district on the matter.

“I talked about it with my friends mockingly at first, but then they were like ‘No I’ve done it, it works,’” Litten said. “I just haven’t had to use it here yet.”

Senior Natalie Combs said she, too, has tried some of these ideas.

“I like Dr. Knight’s idea in trying to use more herbal methods like peppermint oil, and I’ve seen the effects myself in my own vegetable garden where I use either a cayenne pepper spray or citrus oil spray to ward off bugs,” Combs wrote in an email. “[I] feel better knowing I’m not going to later be eating any harsh chemicals that’d traditionally be sprayed.”

Yukako Kawakatsu, an environmental science teacher, said she already knew about Integrated Pest Management, so she was quite open to the idea of the green buckets in classrooms.

“The thing that I would be worried about is that teachers wouldn’t feel comfortable using [the green buckets] even with instructions and stuff. They might feel hesitant because, for the most part, the conventional wisdom is to use pesticides to kill bugs,” Kawakatsu said.

Kawakatsu said she thinks the efficacy of the program depends on how well and how efficiently the organic remedies work.

“The intentions are good. I mean, we do want to minimize the impacts we have — especially the negative impacts — on wildlife in our environment,” Kawakatsu said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to try to be more green, it’s just, I would hope that how we go green doesn’t impact our ability to deal with pest problems in a timely manner.”