I have seen a system that really worked.  It started in New Jersey in 1984 when the state passed it's "Right to Know" law and continued after the Fed hazcom was passed in 1987.  The NJ Public Employees OSHA (PEOSHA) took this law and ran with it.  They required a 4 hour training for all new hires and two hours every year thereafter.  And they certified the trainers.  You had to do your shtick with them observing before you could get a certificate to train.  They checked your test and they wanted to see the results. Those who failed the test and to take the training again.  And if they failed due to a language barrier. the school was required to either find a trainer who trained in their language or reassign them to jobs where there were no chemical products, even cleaners.

The training sessions were limited in size so that everyone's questions could be heard and answered by the trainer, and the content and quality was monitored.  You never knew when they would show up.   And they wrote wonderful data sheets on common chemicals to help provide good information since they realized the old MSDSs were s*t.

To illustrate how serious PEOSHA was about this, they found out Rutgers University had not trained their art and science teachers.  They shut down classes until every teacher was trained.  Two other certified trainers and I trained two sessions a day for several days to get everyone done so classes could reopen.

It was beautiful and it was making a real difference in the schools.  I could do a refresher training and start out talking about multiple synergistic exposures and they knew what I was talking about because they had passed a test on which this was one of the questions for several years.

Then NJ elected Governor Whitman (the same Whitman who became the head of EPA and told us the "air was safe" after 9/11).  She cut the training program to almost nothing and now Jersey has the same problems that New York does.

When I hear the song "Camelot" I think of those almost 10 years that this program was up and running and I saw the good that training could do.  So if you are on a Board of Ed, work to make training mandatory, relevant, require the teachers to pass a test each year, and keep records of those scores.  The teachers will only hate you until they get good at passing the tests and realize have learned something.  It works.

Safety is a science, too.

Monona