The Unique Challenges of Cleaning a School

By Jared Sarbit

Summary:

Schools are tough to keep clean: events run back-to-back, budgets are thin, staff are stretched, and thousands of people pass through daily, spreading germs on desks, lockers, and restrooms. Soft furniture and carpets trap dirt, and evolving standards make compliance hard. Professional cleaners like Picture Perfect Cleaning bring trained teams, flexible schedules, and specialized equipment to keep every surface safe, reducing illness-related absences and creating a healthier, more positive place to learn.

Time to Read	~6 minutes
What You’ll Learn	The biggest cleaning challenges schools face—staffing, budgets, events, germs, and changing standards—and practical solutions for each.
Next Steps	Schedule a walkthrough with Picture Perfect Cleaning to create a custom cleaning plan for your school.

Schools have a duty to provide a clean, safe, and healthy environment for students, teachers, and visitors. A clean school helps prevent the spread of illness and creates a more positive learning environment.

But consistent cleaning in a school environment is far from simple. The pandemic raised already-high standards, and many schools are struggling to keep up. Below, we explore the biggest challenges of keeping schools clean, and what you can do about them.

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Charity fundraiser taking place in school

Increased Use of School Facilities for Events

The Challenge

Schools aren’t just used for classes anymore. Today, they also host sporting events, community gatherings, after-school programs, and parent-teacher meetings. These events can happen back-to-back, leaving little time to reset the space before the next activity begins.

That means you need a way to manage garbage and clutter during each event, and to clear any that remains in the tight windows in between. But since staff and parent volunteers are often so busy with the events themselves, these tasks can fall by the wayside.

The Solution

Create a flexible cleaning schedule that includes quick-turnaround cleaning protocols between events and a weekly deep-clean plan. Partnering with a professional cleaning company is one of the best ways to organize and document these processes. It can also ensure you have enough trained staff to handle busy schedules and last-minute bookings without cutting corners. We’ll talk about that next.

Single school janitor cleaning classroom alone

Inadequate Staff

The Challenge

Most schools run on limited janitorial teams. Teachers and even students sometimes pitch in, but they usually lack the time, training, or equipment to do a thorough job, especially during cold and flu season.

The Solution

Outsource daily and deep cleaning tasks to professionals. This frees up teachers to focus on education while ensuring that cleaning meets health and safety standards. The city’s best janitorial services use background-checked cleaning staff who can work appropriately and responsibly in schools, while using eco-friendly cleaning products and commercial-grade equipment to achieve better results.

Learn More: The Ultimate Guide to Janitorial Companies in Calgary & Edmonton

Limited Funding

The Challenge

Budget constraints often force schools to choose between hiring more staff or buying better supplies. The result is cleaning that may be infrequent or incomplete, leaving schools vulnerable to outbreaks.

Solution

Hiring new employees is too costly and time-consuming for most school budgets, but working with a cleaning company is more cost-efficient. Professional janitorial services like PPC can customize a plan based on your budget that identifies and focuses on your school’s highest-priority areas, like restrooms, cafeterias, and gyms (anywhere with high-touch surfaces).

Ongoing preventive maintenance is also more cost-effective than emergency disinfection after an illness spreads, so this can potentially save your school more money than it costs in the long run.

Busy school hallway with high foot traffic

Large Volume & Variety of People

The Challenge

Hundreds (or thousands) of students, staff, and visitors use the same spaces every day. Lockers, desks, and restrooms can become hotspots for germs, and high foot traffic makes it hard to keep floors and hallways clean.

Solution

Use a combination of daily disinfection for high-touch surfaces and regularly scheduled deep cleaning. Cleaning crews can rotate focus areas so that no space gets overlooked, even during the busiest times of the year.

Fabrics & Furniture

The Challenge

Soft furniture, carpets, and mats are perfect environments for germs to thrive, but they’re difficult to clean effectively with basic supplies. That makes libraries, gyms, classrooms, and offices all prime candidates for professional cleaning as infection control.

Solution

Schedule periodic deep cleaning of upholstery and carpets using specialized equipment. This helps remove dirt, allergens, and bacteria that regular vacuuming can’t reach, improving air quality and overall hygiene.

Learn More: Why Those Carpet Stains Won’t Come Out: Understanding Carpet Chemistry

Lack of Training & Frequently Changing Standards

The Challenge

Since COVID-19, cleaning protocols have become more rigorous and complex. Teachers and staff are expected to follow new procedures on top of their regular duties, and training often falls behind.

Solution

Partner with a professional cleaning company that stays up to date on health and safety guidelines. Our team can handle cleaning compliance for you and even help train your staff on simple daily hygiene practices to supplement professional cleaning.

Bring in the Professionals & Call Picture Perfect Cleaning

Keeping a school clean isn’t just about the way things look. The right cleaning protocols improve health, safety, and peace of mind for students, parents, and staff. Updating your janitorial practices and actually following through with the changes can be a lot of work without help, but partnering with professional janitorial services offers:

A team trained on current cleaning and disinfection standards
Customized schedules that fit your school’s hours and budget
Consistent results that reduce illness-related absences and boost morale

With over 10 years of experience cleaning schools across Alberta, Picture Perfect Cleaning can design a cleaning plan tailored to your facility’s needs.

Ready to make your school a cleaner, healthier place? Contact Picture Perfect Cleaning today to schedule a walkthrough and get a custom cleaning plan.

Cost Calculator

What Is In-House Cleaning Really Costing You?

Adjust the four numbers below to see your true annual in-house cleaning cost, an estimated cost range with Picture Perfect Cleaning, and what you'd save by making the switch.

Current in-house staff cost

Annual wages plus benefits for your cleaning staff

Supply and equipment costs

Annual spend on products, tools, and machine upkeep

Management oversight time

Hours per week spent scheduling and supervising cleaning

hrs/wk

Sick days or missed shifts

Average per cleaning staff member, per year

days/yr

Your Cost Comparison

True In-House Cost

Est. PPC Cost Range

$0 – $0

Estimated Annual Savings by Outsourcing

Based on the average of your PPC estimated range

Get a Custom Quote and See Your Savings →

Estimates are based on average commercial cleaning rates across Alberta and typical management and coverage costs. Your actual quote depends on square footage, service frequency, facility type, and scope of work. Request a custom quote above for an exact number.

The Hidden Cost of In-House Cleaning

A wage comparison only tells part of the story. Here’s what usually gets left out:

Wages and Benefits

Payroll is usually the first number people look at when they think about cleaning costs, but it rarely tells the whole story. Supplies, equipment, manager oversight, scheduling headaches, and the inevitable sick days all add up over time. By the time you account for everything, the true cost of keeping cleaning in-house can look very different from what’s on the payroll report. That’s exactly what our cost comparison tool is designed to help you see, along with what outsourcing might save.

Supplies and Equipment

Cleaning products, paper goods, vacuums, floor machines, and the replacement parts that keep them running all add up over the course of a year. Businesses that clean in-house often buy retail-grade supplies at retail prices because they don’t have access to the commercial pricing that a cleaning company gets from its suppliers. Equipment also breaks down, and replacing a vacuum or floor buffer every few years is a cost that rarely gets planned for in advance.

Management Time

Somebody has to schedule shifts, check the quality of the work, order more supplies when they run low, and step in when something gets missed. That’s real time pulled from a manager’s actual job, and it rarely gets assigned a dollar value, even though it should. If a facilities manager or office lead spends even a few hours a week on cleaning oversight, that’s time not spent on the parts of their role that actually move the business forward.

Absenteeism and Coverage Gaps

Sick days and missed shifts are part of running any team. When they happen, the work still has to get done, which usually means paying someone else to cover the shift or accepting that some tasks will have to wait. Over the course of a year, those extra costs can become surprisingly significant. There’s another effect that’s harder to measure, too. When cleaning is inconsistent, people notice. Employees notice it, clients notice it, and visitors notice it, even if they couldn’t tell you exactly why the space feels different.

Cost Category	What It Covers
Wages & Benefits	Annual pay for in-house cleaning staff
Supplies & Equipment	Products, tools, and machine upkeep
Management Time	Hours spent scheduling and supervising
Absenteeism	Missed shifts and last-minute coverage

Why Outsourcing Often Comes Out Ahead

Once you’ve seen your own numbers, the reasons behind the gap start to make sense.

Predictable Pricing

A cleaning company quote covers labor, supplies, and equipment on a single line. You know what you’re paying before the work starts, and that number doesn’t shift because someone called in sick or a vacuum broke down. Budgeting gets easier when the cost of cleaning is a single line item rather than four separate ones scattered across payroll, supplies, and management time.

No Coverage Gaps

When a member of an in-house cleaning team calls in sick, someone on your staff has to figure out what happens next. With a professional cleaning service, that responsibility shifts to the provider. If a cleaner is unavailable, arranging a replacement is part of the service, so your team isn’t left scrambling to fill the gap.

Accountability Built In

Picture Perfect Cleaning holds COR certification and provides regular service reporting, so you can see what’s being done and when, without spending your own hours checking on it. That’s the management time most in-house teams never get back. Our team also uses EcoLogo- and Green Seal-certified products, so you’re not trading cost savings for a lower cleaning standard.

Get Your Custom Quote

Wages are only one line in what in-house cleaning actually costs. Once you add in supplies, the hours a manager spends overseeing the crew, and the gaps left by sick days, the real number is usually higher than what shows up on a payroll report and often higher than what a professional service would charge for the same work. That’s the gap the tool above is built to show you, along with what outsourcing could put back in your budget.

Our cost comparison tool gives you a reasonable estimate of what you could save by switching to a professional cleaning service, not a final number. Every building is different, and factors like your cleaning schedule, the size of your facility, and the services you need will affect the actual cost. If you’d like a more accurate quote based on your space, contact Picture Perfect Cleaning, and we’ll walk you through the options.