Cherokee County School District Takes Cleaning into Their Own Hands With Kaivac

Cherokee County School District, located in the Metro Atlanta, GA area, serves 42,000 K-12 students. Fifty facilities, totaling 6,200,000 square feet, make up the high-performing public school system. Along with 40 school buildings, the district holds three pre-schools and seven district facilities.

For the last 10 years, Cherokee County School District employed an outside contractor to clean their buildings. “We felt we could better control quality and boost employee engagement if we brought cleaning services back in house,” explains Scott Krug, Director, Facility Support Services.

Krug and his team did appreciate one tool the outside contractor relied on. Each of the district’s six high schools maintained their restrooms with a No-Touch Cleaning® system from Kaivac. Krug and his team understood the advantage of this technology instantly.

“Restrooms cleaned with the No-Touch Cleaning system were in much better shape than the others,” he says. “We wanted to bring that superior level of service to the entire district and really do this right.”

With the help of distributor Chad Cannon, Southeastern Paper Group, Krug purchased 76 No-Touch Cleaning machines. He chose KaiVac® 1250 systems for smaller, elementary school and administrative building restrooms and KaiVac® 1750 systems for larger restrooms with more fixtures. “Every school has at least one machine while a high school could have up to three,” he reports.

Getting all of Cherokee County School District’s 215 FTE worth of custodians on board with the technology took some support. Kaivac helped with a live training videos that addressed employee concerns. “Once employees saw how much better and easier the Kaivac process was they got on board,” says Krug. “Especially when they realized they don’t have to get dirty to clean.”

Positive results, and comments, followed almost immediately. “Elementary principals used to complain about the smell of urine seeping out of the boy’s restrooms and into the hallways,” Krug. “After using the Kaivac that smell , and the complaints, disappeared.”

Complaints about running out of toilet paper or soap, also dwindled. “It takes less time to clean a restroom with the Kaivac, so our employees have more time to refresh the consumables,” says Krug.

Parents visiting during school events and senior management (known as Cabinet members in the Cherokee district) also noticed the change. “Everyone was commenting on how much better the school restrooms looked and smelled after using the Kaivac machines,” Krug reports. “Everyone is pleased with this investment.”