School Cleaning Standards in Ontario: Custodial Schedules and High-Touch Areas

Who is responsible for keeping a school clean

For publicly funded schools, Ontario's Education Act lists keeping school buildings and premises in proper repair and in a proper sanitary condition among a school board's duties. In Durham Region, that means the Durham District School Board, the Durham Catholic District School Board and the French-language boards that operate schools in the region. Boards usually employ their own custodial staff and set their own cleaning standards.

Private and independent schools set their own standards, often with an outside cleaning contractor. Post-secondary campuses, such as Ontario Tech University and Durham College in Oshawa, run their own facilities departments.

Because the law sets the duty but not the method, the details live in each school's custodial plan: which rooms are cleaned, how often, to what standard, and who checks the work.

Public health and reporting rules

Ontario's Health Protection and Promotion Act is the main public health law. It requires school principals to report certain communicable diseases to the local medical officer of health, and it gives public health units the authority to advise and direct during outbreaks. In Durham Region, the public health unit is the Durham Region Health Department.

In practice, when a school has an outbreak, such as a gastrointestinal illness spreading through a class, public health guidance usually calls for more frequent cleaning and disinfection of washrooms and high-touch surfaces for a set period. A good custodial plan has an outbreak level written into it in advance, so it can start the same day without anyone negotiating extra hours.

Worker safety rules that apply to custodial work

Custodians and contract cleaners are workers, so the Occupational Health and Safety Act applies to them like any other workplace. The employer must provide training, safe equipment and information about hazards.

Cleaning chemicals fall under WHMIS 2015, Canada's system for hazardous products in the workplace. Products must be properly labelled, and safety data sheets must be available to the people who use them. Disinfectants sold in Canada must be authorized by Health Canada and carry a Drug Identification Number (DIN) on the label, which tells you the product has been reviewed for the claims it makes.

How a school custodial schedule is built

Most school cleaning plans work in three layers: daily, periodic and summer. The daily layer happens after dismissal, when classrooms are empty. The periodic layer covers tasks done weekly or monthly. The summer layer is the deep work that can only happen when the building is empty for weeks.

Many facility managers use the custodial levels published by APPA, a facilities management association for education, as a reference. APPA describes five appearance levels, from a spotless standard down to neglect, and helps schools decide which level each type of space needs. A kindergarten washroom and a storage room do not need the same level.

• Daily: classrooms, washrooms, corridors, entrances, cafeteria and staff room
• Weekly: interior glass, baseboards, high dusting in reach, gym floor deep mop
• Monthly: vents, light fixtures in reach, locker exteriors, carpet spot cleaning
• Summer: floor stripping and refinishing, carpet extraction, wall and locker washing, furniture moved and cleaned underneath

The high-touch areas that matter most

In a school, the surfaces touched by the most hands are where cleaning has the most effect. These include door handles and push plates on both sides of the door, light switches, stair and ramp railings, washroom taps, flush handles and stall locks, water bottle fillers, shared keyboards and tablets, and desk and chair edges in classrooms.

Washrooms deserve special attention. They take more use per fixture than almost any other room in a building, and they are where most complaints from parents and staff start. Daily cleaning, disinfection and restocking are the baseline, with descaling of fixtures on a regular cycle.

Cafeterias and lunch areas are food spaces. Tables are cleaned between sittings where possible, and floors are cleaned to remove grease and food, not just mopped. Waste should not be left in the building overnight.

Cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting are different

Cleaning removes dirt and most germs with soap or detergent and water. Disinfecting uses a registered product to kill germs on a surface, and it only works properly on a surface that has already been cleaned. Every disinfectant has a contact time on its label: the surface must stay wet for that long to reach the claimed result.

For schools, that means two things. First, routine cleaning does most of the work; disinfection is targeted at high-touch surfaces and washrooms, and stepped up during outbreaks. Second, products should be applied after students leave and allowed their full contact time, rather than sprayed and wiped immediately.

Summer and break projects

The summer break is when a school catches up on work that cannot happen during term. Hard floors are stripped and refinished, carpets are extracted, walls and lockers are washed, furniture is moved and cleaned underneath, and high surfaces are dusted. Shorter breaks, such as the winter and March breaks, are used for smaller resets.

Because summer work is a project with its own timeline, it is best scoped and priced separately from term-time cleaning. That also makes it easy to bring in an outside contractor for the summer only, while the school's own staff handle daily cleaning.

Writing a school cleaning scope

Whether you use your own custodians or a contractor, a written scope prevents most problems. List each room type, the tasks done in it, and the frequency. Add the outbreak level and who can trigger it. Name the products, attach the safety data sheets, and say how the work will be checked and recorded.

If you hire a contractor, ask for proof of commercial liability insurance, a current WSIB clearance certificate, and confirmation that staff are police-checked before they work in the school. Bluestone provides its WSIB clearance certificate and certificate of insurance on request, and our staff are police-checked; contact us to ask. We explain WSIB clearance in our guide to WSIB clearance for cleaning contractors.

Gyms, change rooms and other special spaces

Gymnasium floors are usually wood or a resilient sports surface, and each has its own care instructions from the manufacturer. Using the wrong cleaner or too much water can damage the finish and make the floor slippery. Daily dust-mopping and damp-mopping with a product made for the surface, plus a periodic recoat over the summer, keeps a gym floor safe and lasting.

Change rooms, showers and mats need disinfection on a schedule that keeps up with use, since skin contact is constant. Science labs, art rooms and technology shops have their own hazards; custodians should know what not to touch, such as chemical storage or equipment, and clean around it.

Libraries and computer rooms collect dust on shelves and electronics. Shared keyboards, mice and tablets should be cleaned with products the device maker allows, usually a disinfectant wipe that is not dripping wet.

Checking the work

A schedule only helps if someone checks it. Many schools use a simple room checklist that the custodian signs each night, plus regular walk-throughs by a head custodian or facility coordinator. Problems found during a walk-through go back to the person responsible the next day, and repeated misses lead to a change in the routine or the staffing.

If a contractor cleans the school, the same approach works: a signed log for each visit, a named supervisor, and a regular walk-through with the school's own contact.

School cleaning in Durham Region

Bluestone Janitorial provides night cleaning and day porter service for private and independent schools, strip and wax and carpet cleaning over breaks, and fogging and disinfecting during outbreaks, in Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa and Clarington. We work alongside a school's own custodial plan where there is one. See our school cleaning services page for how our programs work, or our daycare cleaning services for child care centres attached to schools.