Students going back to school have had to face challenges in order to avoid getting COVID, but custodians have faced problems as well.

“Just trying to keep everyone safe, and not get the COVID ourselves. Trying to get into whatever rooms that may have been exposed. Trying to get those clean in a proper manner, and after 24 hours it’ll be ready to go again,” head custodian Ira Allen said.

Most of their job is the same as it was before, but they do it more often.

“It’s just more cleaning, more frequent cleaning,” Allen said. “We usually do a deep cleaning in the evening and maintaining in the day but now there more cleaning during the day as well as in the evening.”

However, the staff has been given a new tool to help combat the virus.

“Now they’ve added a couple more steps. We have a machine we have to use to spray down all the classes. They also added a hand held scrubber,” Allen said.

The Janitorial stuff does a lot of cleaning to make sure the school is safe, but do the students know and appreciate what they do, especially now during this pandemic?

“I definitely notice the work that they do, they keep our rooms clean and safe for us, yes,” teacher Tom Noonan said.

“Oh, yes, of course. Like everything I do, I always try to clean up after myself. Id like to make their job at least a little bit easier and we should help them out a lot more because there’s not as many of them as there are us and they’ve got to clean up the school,” student Noah Rainey said.

“Yes, I believe now that they see the custodial staff as important to keep everyone clean and everyone safe,” Allen said.

“On a normal basis yes. I think staff and teachers appreciate it but I don’t think they really honestly know what we’re going through to clean up the COVID,” custodian Rose Hill said.

Be sure to thank the custodians for all they do in these trying times, and clean up after yourselves to minimize their workload.