Sutton schools have janitors and cleaning staff like all schools and businesses, but most don’t see the work that’s put into keeping schools clean.
I spoke to the janitors at our schools and got a surprising answer from them on how bad the cleaning is after school. Their opinion should matter more than anyone as it’s their job to keep our building clean and they see the realities
In the past, I have seen and heard things about keeping the building clean and staff have even spoke to students about it. I have sat in our student productive periods (study halls) and seen trash and food in the corners rotting after kids throw it there during lunch.
Not that long ago we had a ban on eating outside the cafeteria because people could not keep the building clean. The head of maintenance and janitorial work, Mr. Richard, has in the past addressed issues to the principal and vice principal about students making unnecessary messes.
Every year the staff and custodians have tried to make policies that keep the school clean and tried to enforce them. Some kids see these as unfair or controlling but don’t realize the impact they have on the health of the people and cleanliness of the building.
When I spoke to the janitors about how they feel this year, they were happy to say it was an improvement as of the most recent years and they thanked our principal, Mr. Urquhart, and our vice principal, Mr. Niedzwiecki, for making sure to keep a close eye on people put trash and food in the proper places.
A problem that they said they have is with the bathrooms. Students often do not throw paper towels in the trash cans or flush toilets. I have seen these things as well; students miss the trash can and just leave it on the ground because they are too lazy.
Addressing other things like making sure trash gets into the bin, they said they often find trash right next to a bin and don’t know why the person couldn’t just put it in. The same goes for the toilets–people shouldn’t leave the toilets un-flushed. It is very simple to flush a toilet and not put things in the urinals or the sinks. It’s very gross to think about putting something in a toilet that doesn’t belong there willingly and thinking that it is funny.
The staff are lucky to have a floor sweeper that can drive and clean large areas but those corners where people leave food have to be cleaned by hand and can be gross and not fair to them when we could just throw away our trash in the first place.
If we could all try harder to clean up after ourselves, it could go along way to helping our custodian staff and keeping our school cleaner. This is for us just as much as it is for are staff.
