Hollister
– While running laps around the field Monday for their morning
physical education activities, the 120 fourth- and fifth-grade
students at R.O. Hardin School encountered a problem: Gopher holes
covered their path.
Hollister – While running laps around the field Monday for their morning physical education activities, the 120 fourth- and fifth-grade students at R.O. Hardin School encountered a problem: Gopher holes covered their path.
Susan Bessette, who teaches fourth grade at the school and leads her students in the mile run every Monday and Friday, said she was forced to cut the activity short after twisting her own ankle twice in gopher holes.
“This is so unsafe,” Bessette said. “There’s no flat surface, and we’re making them run? We can’t do that. That is a health issue.”
R.O. Hardin is one of four Hollister schools, along with Rancho San Justo, Calaveras, and Marguerite Maze, that have continuously had significant problems with gopher-infested playfields. All of the schools in Hollister School District, however, have had some problems with the burrowing rodent.
“We’re in an agricultural community,” said Jack Bachofer, HSD’s chief business official, “and that’s why we have a gopher problem.”
Several of the schools are near farm fields or orchards, making this problem worse. Bachofer, along with the school district’s maintenance and operations manager, Don Fanning, has worked on addressing the gopher presence. In December, Bachofer and Fanning met with Wild West Pest Control Service of San Martin to talk about how they could alleviate the problem.
The pest control service treats all the schools’ fields bi-weekly by putting toxic pellets into the holes. After last month’s meeting, the school board decided to increase it to a weekly application at the four schools with the worst problems. The increase in services will result in an additional cost of $5,160 per year to the school district.
The ongoing gopher problem will be discussed at today’s Hollister school board meeting at 6pm in the Enterprise/Union Room of the district office.
Bella Zambrano and Malenie Lopez, two second-graders at R.O. Hardin, said they had spotted gophers many times on the field, and took for granted that their holes were a safety hazard. When doing backflips, their favorite recess activity, they look for holes beforehand.
“If we see some holes, we know that’s not a perfect place and we might get hurt so we go someplace else,” Zambrano, 7, said.
But despite their safety precautions, both said they had tripped in gopher holes on numerous occasions while playing on the school field.
The four schools have reported no serious injuries from the holes this year. But they remain a concern for many of the principals.
Don Knapp, principal at Rancho San Justo Middle School, said he has repeated problems with old tunnels caving in, leaving large gaps in the school’s fields. Keeping on top of the gopher activity, however, can prove difficult around schools, when student health becomes an issue.
“They have to be really careful, because you can’t just put out poison at a school,” Knapp said.
Bachofer said the schools are restricted in the types of chemicals that can be used, as well as the timing for the treatment, to protect student health.
Alice Joy covers education for the Free Lance. She can be reached at [email protected] or 831-637-5566 ext. 336.
