Portland Public Schools (PPS), an urban school district in Portland, Oregon founded in 1851− now the largest district in the Pacific Northwest with approximately 47,000 students in 80 schools – has implemented the Process Cleaning for Healthy Schools (PC4HS) program in 15 schools, with district-wide rollout planned.
According to Kalli M. Butt − Custodial Quality Assurance Coordinator, Facility Operations, Facilities & Asset Management, Portland Public Schools (PPS), and PC4HS Field Advisory Board (FAB) member: “At Portland Public Schools, our purpose is to provide a safe, healthy, clean environment where teachers can teach, students can learn, and everyone maximizes their potential.”
PC4HS has helped by enabling daily sanitizing of PPS classroom touch points, and putting the focus on health first, appearance second, while raising professionalism and consistency through process and product standardization.
Educating school management and staff, doing custodial work loading ‘homework’, and defining (and raising) expectations, have also been key to success.
“Before we go into a school, there is an educational piece that includes visuals and teaching aids to convey a bit of the science of cleaning − for example, why we take before and after ATP measurements of surfaces − and what cleaning ‘performance’ means in terms of health.”
“We have done time studies and simplified training to enable full deployment within PPS over time,” she said.