The last few months of the school year are not downtime for facilities teams. They are the planning window that determines whether your summer runs smoothly or falls apart.
Before the last day of school, every building team should have answers to these questions. The teams that do finish on time. The teams that don't spend the first two weeks of summer figuring out what they should have known in April.
1. Know what's changing in your building.
Start here. Talk to your building principals now — not in June. Find out which teachers are moving classrooms, transferring to other buildings, or retiring. Get a room-by-room picture of what is staying, what is moving, and what is being staged.
If your district has capital improvement projects scheduled for the summer, get the construction timeline from your project manager before school ends. Know which spaces will be under construction and when they will be released for cleaning. Your entire summer schedule gets built around this information — not the other way around.
2. Build your cleaning sequence around the moves.
Classroom cleaning does not begin until all moves and staging are complete. Cleaning a room that is about to be used as a staging area for construction or a furniture move is wasted work. Sequence matters.
Once you know what is moving and when, map out which buildings and rooms get cleaned in what order. Rooms being used for staging get cleaned last. Rooms connected to active construction get scheduled around the contractor's release dates. Put it in writing so your team has a plan, not just a general idea.
3. Walk every floor before you order anything.
Before you place a single supply order or schedule a single crew, walk every floor in every building. Determine whether each space needs a quick scrub and recoat or a full strip and rewax. These are not the same job. A full strip takes significantly more time, chemicals, and labor. Discovering mid-July that three buildings need full strips — when you planned for recoats — is how summer schedules fall apart. Know what you are dealing with before summer starts.
4. Get your orders in at least six weeks before school ends.
This is where most building teams lose time. Chemical orders, supply orders, box orders, filter orders — all of it needs to go in no later than six weeks before the last day of school. Special order items can take up to six weeks to arrive. If you wait until summer to order, you will be waiting on supplies while your cleaning window closes.
Get a box count from each building principal based on the move list you already pulled together. Order filters for every HVAC system in the building. Make sure every building is stocked with the right chemicals and tools to do the work that's actually planned — not last year's supplies for last year's scope.
5. Clean top down — every room, every time.
Regardless of the method, always start at the top. Clean all furniture first — wipe down desks, chairs, shelving, and cabinet fronts before anything touches the floor. Once the furniture is clean, the Lead Custodian chooses the method that fits the room.
Option 1 — Move all furniture into the hallway. With the room fully cleared, clean the entire floor in one pass — carpet extraction, VCT scrub and recoat, or strip and wax. Once the floor is dry, bring the furniture back in and reset the room.
Option 2 — Work in halves. Move all furniture to one side of the room, clean the exposed floor, and let it dry completely. Then move everything to the finished side and clean the remaining half. Once dry, reset the room.
Option 1 is faster when hallway space allows. Option 2 is better when the hallway is congested with boxes or staging. The Lead Custodian knows the building — the decision is theirs to make.
6. Stay in front of construction — all summer.
Once summer begins, construction coordination is an ongoing responsibility, not a one-time conversation. If your crew is working in an area a contractor is using, wet floor signs go up and the site supervisor gets notified. If a space is released early, your team needs to be ready to move in. If a space is delayed, adjust the schedule, document the reason, and communicate it up the chain. Administration should hear about construction delays from you — not discover them in August.
The custodial team is the eyes and ears on the ground. If something looks wrong — debris blocking an exit, an unexpected hazard, a space that was supposed to be cleared but isn't — it gets reported immediately to the project manager and your supervisor. That communication protects your staff and keeps the project on track.
The building teams that go into summer with answers to all six of these areas are the ones that hand off clean, ready buildings on opening day.
Talk soon,
Daniel Mendoza Facility Insight www.facilityinsight.com
P.S. Looking for a complete set of print-ready checklists for your summer cleaning rotation? The K-12 Summer Facilities Checklist Bundle covers every area of your building for $27. Get it here →
