The Importance Of Educational Facility Cleaning Services
Until their early twenties, Americans spend the majority of their lives attending school. It’s a cornerstone of our society, and the typical student will spend twelve to sixteen years in the classroom until they finish high school or obtain their undergraduate degrees. It’s one of the most important facets of young adulthood, and it’s vitally important that our nation’s schools are well-equipped to provide quality education to every student who enters a classroom. For decades, most schools have handled their maintenance and cleaning in-house. But the events of the last few years have shown that the “tried and true” methods most schools use aren’t as effective as they once seemed. As such, school cleaning services have become a very popular option among both primary and secondary school systems.
School administrators, students, parents, and even government agencies have taken notice of how vital a clean learning environment is for student success. As diseases have rapidly spread and absenteeism has skyrocketed, everyone is realizing the impact that a clean educational facility can have on learning outcomes and institutions’ finances.
We understand how vitally important this issue is, which is why we want to emphasize the issues facing our education system and highlight solutions that can help schools provide the best education possible to their students.
COMMUNICABLE DISEASES IN SCHOOLS
The spread of infectious diseases is commonplace in schools—one might even consider schools to be a breeding ground for illnesses. The language may seem harsh, but it’s the only way to adequately describe the unaddressed reality we’re facing.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. If you’ve had children or can recall from your formative years attending public school, you know that sickness spreads like wildfire. When one student comes to school sick, there’s a good chance that more of their classmates will get sick too.
This is a truth that humanity has lived with forever. There is an inherent risk of communicable diseases being spread in large group settings where individuals are in contact with each other for extended periods of time.
Although this is an issue that we’ve all dealt with for years, the Covid-19 Pandemic made it very obvious that our schools are facing a health crisis and that steps need to be taken—like enlisting school cleaning services—to mitigate the threat.
While there aren’t any concrete ways to eliminate the spread of illness caused by close interpersonal contact (direct transmission), that doesn’t mean we don’t have some options. There are proven ways for school cleaning services to reduce the likelihood of indirect transmission of diseases from high-contact surfaces. But before we get into the solutions, it’s important you understand the gravity of the crisis educational institutions are facing.
A HEALTH CRISIS IN EDUCATION
Back when the Covid-19 pandemic started, society at large was unprepared to handle such a large health scare. Health experts were unsure of how the disease spread, how severe it was, and even what venues posed the largest risk of becoming “superspreaders.”
It didn’t take long for experts and government officials to realize that schools would be a prime location for the sickness to spread, and as such most were shut down in short order. Remote learning was instituted at all levels of education and was in place until the start of the 2021-2022 school year. By the start of the next school year, things were back to normal and in-person classes resumed.
However, the issues facing the education system and students have persisted. Around the United States, we’re seeing an exponential increase in the number of students missing school due to illnesses. Throughout 2022 and into 2023, hundreds of schools and school districts have closed due to the sheer number of students and staff who had become ill. While the closures have only been temporary so far, this spike in closures serves as a reminder of the issues we’re facing and the need for school cleaning services.
THE IMPACT OF ILLNESS ON THE EDUCATION SYSTEM
Absenteeism is on the rise in America. The growing trend has become a serious concern. Upon first thought, it seems easy to blame this trend on the pandemic. And while Covid-19 certainly did cause an increase in absenteeism, the problem is worse now than it was during the height of the pandemic.
Education Week reported that after the 2021-2022 school year, more than 70% of the elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools surveyed saw increases in chronic absenteeism—which is described as missing 18 or more days in a school year—among students and teachers.
Surprisingly, the level of chronic absenteeism grew more among teachers than students during that school year. There was a 49% increase among teachers and a 39% increase among students. Unsurprisingly, minority-serving schools were impacted the most by these changes. And of all student absences, it’s estimated that 60 million each year are attributable to communicable illnesses. School cleaning services can help reduce that number by improving sanitation practices.
THE REAL COST OF ABSENTEEISM
The consequences of student and teacher absences are two-fold.
On one hand, there are obvious consequences to learning outcomes each time a student or teacher is absent. When a student can’t attend class, they won’t be able to learn the new material and may be unable to complete necessary coursework. If an illness causes an extended absence, then it will become increasingly difficult for them to recover.
In the same vein, when teachers are sick and aren’t present to teach their class, a substitute must be hired and learning outcomes may not be met for one reason or another. This leads us to the second consequence of absenteeism: the loss of financial resources.
Both student and teacher absences have a negative financial impact on a school’s bottom line. According to Deb Group, an SC Johnson subsidiary, teachers miss an average of 5 days each school year. While this may seem like a trivial number of absences, this costs $25 billion each year.
At a granular level, student absences in states like California and Illinois—where funding is tied to attendance—individual schools lose money each time a student isn’t in attendance even if the absence is tied to sickness. Reducing unnecessary absences caused by illness is crucial to reducing the amount of resources lost, and school cleaning services can help.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A CLEAN LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Another leading cause of absenteeism among both teachers and students is the physical learning environment itself. If your school cleaning services leave your educational facilities visibly dirty, dilapidated, or otherwise poorly maintained, it’s going to cause needless absences among your students and staff.
They acknowledge that the cleanliness of a student’s educational environment will have a direct impact on their learning outcomes and even their behavior. The same is true for your teaching staff. If the learning environment is poorly maintained, then morale will be severely impacted; this will lead to teacher burnout, and eventually, staffing shortages.
While school cleaning services aren’t a cure-all for bad learning environments, having a clean environment is a crucial step in the right direction.
PERFORMANCE BENEFITS OF A CLEAN SCHOOL
Students spend a large portion of their young adult lives in the classroom. Given that the average school day is 6-7 hours long, not including any extracurricular activities, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most learning is done on school grounds. And in college, the average student will likely spend 90% of their time on school grounds—assuming they are living on campus.
Students have reason to be invested in their school’s overall maintenance and cleanliness. Because not only are they spending a large portion of their time at school and in class, but their performance is directly impacted by their learning environment. So keeping classrooms clean with school cleaning services is crucial for academic achievement.
In a national study conducted by Brigham Young University, researchers found a positive correlation between a school’s level of upkeep and students’ performance. When the learning environment is kept clean and well-maintained, students are more likely to regularly attend class and perform well.
When a school was poorly maintained and had inadequate custodial services, then students were more likely to miss class which is directly correlated to their test scores and overall academic achievement.
CREATING A MORE SANITARY EDUCATION SYSTEM
School cleaning services are crucial for academic success, and educational institutions cannot afford to neglect them. While issues with cleanliness and maintenance existed well before the Covid-19 pandemic, there has never been a better time to institute change.
It’s speculated that people’s immune systems haven’t returned to full strength following the rollback of Covid-era guidelines, and absenteeism has been on the rise among both teachers and students. While it’s unlikely that masks and plastic dividing walls make their way back into schools, there are concrete steps schools can take that will help mitigate the spread of communicable diseases with the help of school cleaning services.
BACK TO THE BASICS
Schools need to get back to promoting the basics of cleanliness. Encouraging students to thoroughly wash their hands. Asking sick students to stay at home or wear a mask to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. Even installing more hand sanitizing stations around school grounds. These are some basic school cleaning services that schools can do to help maintain a clean and sanitary educational environment.
ABANDONING OUTDATED PRACTICES AND ADOPTING INNOVATION
Schools have been sanitizing and cleaning their facilities using the same cleaning equipment for decades. Legacy tools like trigger sprays, foggers, and misters are among the most commonly used in the education world. With the sheer volume of people moving throughout the school, and the number of high-contact surfaces that need to be accounted for, there is simply no way to efficiently and effectively sanitize classrooms with such outdated techniques.
Partnering with an outside company for school cleaning services can help fix this problem by implementing innovative and modern techniques and tools that are more effective. This will help create cleaner learning environments and reduce the likelihood of illness outbreaks.
ELEVATE YOUR CLEANING PROTOCOLS
Your school system can improve its cleaning procedures with support from A&A. We use cutting-edge methods and technology, like the Clorox Total 360 cleaning system, to provide you with cleaner classrooms and more thorough school cleaning services.
Additionally, you can be certain that your students are learning in the cleanest environment possible thanks to our WellnessClean™ system, which was created in partnership with independent infectious disease and industrial hygiene specialists.
Regardless of what your current cleaning protocols are, A&A can partner with you to create a school cleaning services plan that’s uniquely tailored to your institution’s needs.
Contact A&A today to discuss how we can help provide your students with the clean learning environment they need to achieve academic success.
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