MANKATO — Several weeks ago, Joe Meixl received a phone call from an official with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The third-largest public school system in the country needed advice — and the health and safety director for Mankato Area Public Schools was the only man in the land qualified to give it.

After 14 years of planning and effort, Meixl and Mankato schools have earned top ratings in a nationwide OSHA program designed to recognize work sites that have “achieved exemplary occupational safety and health.”

Mankato is the first school district in the country to earn the designation, and others are trying to follow suit.

“It’s rigorous,” Meixl said of the certification process which requires volumes of data, inspections and a safety plan that is nothing less than comprehensive. “It can’t be smoke and mirrors.”

Meixl started the process about 15 years ago when another Minnesota school district received an expensive, and widely publicized, fine from OSHA. Wanting to gauge the efficacy of his own safety program, Meixl invited inspectors to the district to review programs and policies.

Their verdict back then was that Mankato Area Public Schools were below average.

“So, I started chipping away little by little,” Meixl said.

He developed emergency teams at school sites in the district. He also developed threat assessment, first aid/CPR and crisis prevention teams at each site.

He began advocating a “bottom-up” safety model in which employees — as opposed to administrators — recommend safety policies. He began working with staff groups to find specific equipment that would reduce injuries.

At Mankato East, Meixl helped purchase and install a transport system for severely disabled students that was hooked to a track on the ceiling, thus reducing injuries related to moving and lifting students.

He found wheeled carts for teachers to use when transporting books and materials from the parking lot to the school so they wouldn’t lose their balance on snow and ice. He helped develop a training checklist for science students before they begin classroom experiments and installed automatic-stop systems on saws that students use for industrial arts.

Gradually, Meixl began to see fewer worker’s compensation claims and fewer work-related injuries.

And Jerry Kolander, district business manager, began to see significant savings on district insurance costs.

“We’ve been able to retain very good rates,” Kolander said. “Insurance companies look at how much risk you have and they look at our plan very favorably.”

Mankato schools officially earned their certifications in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program in January (each school site was certified independently). This May, Meixl and the district will be recognized during a luncheon at the Capital with Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Other organizations that have received similar certification around the country include: Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Exxon Mobile, L ‘Oreal, DuPont, Chevron and Pratt & Whitney.

OSHA estimates that employees working at participating organizations miss work due to injury at a rate 52 percent less than industry averages.

Tom Rekstein, a Mankato Area School Board member and insurance agent, said he was impressed with the planning and extensive data collection that went into earning the designation. As a one-time agent for the school district, Rekstein said he knows first-hand how valuable such efforts can be.

But he also agreed with Meixl, who gave credit to district staff for embracing health and safety programs.

“For a district with 1,000 employees,” Rekstein said, “it’s very impressive to have everybody on board.”