Custodian Samantha Fitch is reflected in a mirror as she sanitizes a bathroom at Stanford Elementary School Friday, Feb. 12, 2021.
Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Armed with spray bottles of light pink disinfectant, Stanford Elementary School custodian Lance Proehl sweeps through a classroom, hitting every surface with a blast of cleaner.
Desks, chairs, computer keyboards, light switches, door handles — if fingers touch it, Proehl cleans it. When he’s done, he fills out a door hanger noting the date and time the room at the northeast Las Vegas school has been sanitized.
With some students returning to the classroom in just over a week, the stakes have never been higher for the small army of custodians who keep schools clean and safe.
“We want to make sure that nobody gets sick here,” said David Longoria-Buffington, the school’s head custodian.
Clark County School District students, who have been out of the classroom for nearly a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, will start returning March 1. Pre-kindergarten through third-graders will go first, with older students expected to return later.
Stanford is preparing for about 100 children to return in the hybrid, in-person model and will be grouped into classrooms of around 10 students.
About half will attend classes on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other half on Thursdays and Fridays, while continuing remote learning the rest of the week. Wednesdays is reserved for cleaning.
That’s where the janitorial team will continue with their efforts, which include cleaning and sanitizing classrooms every night after students leave. Bathrooms will be disinfected at least three times a day.
Before the pandemic, the doors, light switches and sinks inside classrooms were wiped down with disinfectant on a daily basis. Now, desks, chairs, keyboards, printers and “you name it” will also sanitized, Longoria-Buffington said.
A stronger disinfectant is used for deep cleaning sessions on Wednesday because that’s when no children are on campus and they can air out the building. Another deep clean happens Friday night; the campus is closed on weekends.
The crew will go through at least 10 bottles of disinfectant a day to clean the 55 classrooms and bathrooms. They are waiting to get backpack sprayers so they don’t have to continually fill up spray bottles.
Custodians will also run ultraviolet-light air purifiers in classrooms for two hours each night.
They watched instructional videos issued by CCSD with cleaning protocols, such as how long to let disinfectant sit before wiping it down and how to put a mask on without contaminating it with germs.
Samantha Fitch, part of a three-person cleaning crew at Stanford, said she’s excited about students coming back.
“I just want to make sure that when they come in, students and staff, that they know that it’s clean,” Fitch said.
The cleaning crew has placed social-distancing markers on floors and set up about 60 hand sanitizing stations. Returning students will undergo temperature checks, be required to wear face coverings and will have very limited movement throughout the building.
The custodians, who CCSD has provided with face shields, masks and gloves, have also received extra training to learn how to combat the virus and stay safe.
“I make sure that they have all the protection they need,” Longoria-Buffington said.
School employees have also been prioritized to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and Longoria-Buffington and Proehl have already had their first doses. Fitch didn’t say if she has been inoculated.
None of the custodians has been infected or exposed to the coronavirus as far as they know. ”We’ve all been healthy and good,” Longoria-Buffington said.
While custodians often work unnoticed, once everyone gets back to school, they will recognize “that we play a big factor in the health of the school,” Longoria-Buffington said.
“I like to show off my school and the things that we do,” he said. "Lots of people don’t know. They don’t realize how much we actually do.”
