Page 32 - School Planning & Management, March 2019

FACILITIES { LEARNING SPACES }
Keeping Schools Healthy
Starts Before the Kids Get to School By Robert Kravitz
Further, the reverse can happen. Once home, those same pathogens on hands can be transferred to scores of surfaces throughout the house.
According to the National Educa-
tion Association (NEA), this can and has proven to be a serious problem. The orga- nization reports, “School buses are mobile environments that are prone to the spread of infectious diseases such as colds and the flu. In addition to the number of students who may introduce bacteria and viruses when they board the bus, surfaces such
as the seatbacks and handrails can also contribute to the further spread of germs. Keeping these areas clean can help prevent germs and the spread of disease.”
The question then arises, why isn’t more time spent on keeping school buses clean and healthy? After all, school districts throughout the country have invested con- siderable sums in both time and energy to help keep schools clean. Why not the buses that carry students to school?
Some of the answers to these questions are the following:
• Administrators in some school districts
may not be aware of this problem.
• Many school districts hire outside con-
tractors to bus students; they believe the contractor is responsible for keeping the buses healthy.
• Buses can take a long time to clean.
While all of these answers carry some weight, it is the last one that is often the core issue. If manually cleaned, areas in the bus that must be wiped down include seats/seat backs, railings, doors and window areas, and floors swept, and all too often, also mopped.* Further, this work should be performed daily or a regular cleaning schedule should be established.
Compounding the problem, many of these areas in the bus must be cleaned twice. We must always remember when manually cleaning surfaces that before we can disin- fect a surface, it must be first cleaned with an all-purpose cleaner. Then it is cleaned again with a disinfectant. It’s a two-step process.
STUDIES INDICATE THAT AS much as 80 percent of the soil and debris in a facility is essentially
walked-in the front door. This is because moisture, soil, grit, and sand collect on shoe bottoms. It is also why ISSA, the worldwide cleaning association, the U.S. Green Building Council, and other organizations, encour- age or require the use of floor mats installed at all building entries. Mats help keep soil outside and prevent it from coming inside.
However, if our goal is to keep schools clean and healthy, we may want to go be- yond just floor mats. What administrators also need to consider are the buses used to transport students to and from schools ev-
ery day. The American School Bus Council estimates about 480,000 school buses are carrying 25 million American school chil- dren each day. It’s the largest form of public transportation in the country.
But what if those school buses are con- taminated with germs, such as Norovirus– which can live on surfaces for up to two weeks–Scabies, HIV, hepatitis, MRSA, or Staph, just to name a few. If students touch those surfaces, the pathogens on those surfaces may collect on their hands and then be transferred to their mouths, nose, or eyes, doorknobs, desks, ledges, restroom fixtures, and just about any “touchable” surface in the school.
32 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MARCH 2019
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