Episode Details

Superintendent Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. Today, we're talking about the enormous amount of work that is underway as we prepare to reopen schools this fall, after they were dismissed last March due to the pandemic. We know that there is a lot yet to be decided, but we would like parents, students, and employees to know about the unique and unprecedented plan for deep cleaning, sanitizing and providing meal service in our schools, as we make every effort to keep students, teachers, and staff as safe as possible. We're going to start by speaking with the Director of Custodial and Energy Services, Steve Peart. Steve, welcome.

Steve:
Thank you.

Superintendent:
You've been on the show before.  We have asked you come on one more time. You're considered a friend of the show. So welcome.

I know that you're doing a lot of work preparing for the fall, and we just want to talk with you about some of the cleaning and disinfecting procedures that will be in place and some of the equipment that we've purchased to help keep schools as clean as possible in the fall. I would note that in the spring there was the ability. while students were not in school. to do a lot of the deep cleaning that normally would happen over the summer. From my understanding, we've been able to catch up on a lot of work orders during that time. Is that correct?

Superintendent Godfrey:
Yes, it is. We've done relatively two extra months of summer cleaning that is totally summer cleaning because there were still people occupying the buildings. It still gave us a time to go through  the classrooms with additional thoroughness in the cleaning and disinfecting, all the desks and stuff were cleaned and disinfected. We were able to use that time for getting ready to come back to school. There was a lot to do, but there was also some additional time to take some things off the to-do list.

Superintendent Godfrey:
Yes. Tell us about the equipment that has been purchased for the fall. The Board approved some additional equipment for each building.

Steve:
Okay. We have purchased some sprayers that will enable us to go through and spray each area down. Those can be used after school. They're not necessarily for during the day or for when students are present. You may have heard that they're called "misters". They've also been called "foggers". It's just a way of dispensing disinfectant and being able to get into areas that you couldn't normally get into with hand wiping,

Superintendent Godfrey:
I was in a Zoom focus group meeting with fifth graders, and I described how we have a machine that uses fog to clean playground equipment because they wanted to be sure they were able to still go out to recess. And one fifth grader asked, "So does it create a fog around the whole playground that just kind of stays there? So we'd be playing in the fog?" And I explained to him that, no, it just sends the cleaner around the surfaces. And I'm really excited about having that equipment. That means that we would have one per school. Is that correct?

Steve
Yeah, there would be at least one per school. Once all the equipment arrives, there should be at least one per school. Some of the larger buildings are going to have mobile pieces of equipment because they are going to need to clean sports equipment in between uses. Some of those kinds of things will need to be done multiple times a day. This will also enable a head custodian