Rochester schools spend $70K on high powered cleaning machines in preparations for students' return

The start of school is still more than two months away but districts are making big plans for the fall while pitching several ideas to safely bring back students and staff. One of those is Rochester schools which is taking as many steps as possible, in the wake of COVID-19.

School officials are working to provide a safe environment for students and staff as the battle against the deadly coronavirus continues. 

Superintendent Dr. Robert Shaner said they're doing everything they bought a Clorox-360 for every building.

"We're able to put safety procedures in place to ensure that kids are safe in this facility and now we can start to think about how we scale that up for a school district of 15,000 kids," Dr. Shaner said.

The machines, which in total cost the district $70,000 are taking a hit on the budget but knows it can't put a price tag on health and safety.

"The custodian walks in wipes everything down and then, I guess you could call it fog," Shaner said. "We can disinfect every building daily and every classroom daily."

According to contract manager Michaiah McCollum, the solution is almost immediate.

"It uses a non-bleach cleaning and sanitizing solution which is EPA registered," McCollum said. "Kills 99.9% of germs less than 2 minutes."

Playground equipment and school buses also sanitized as part of the cleaning protocol. The schools will also be distributing 1,800 handwashing instructions to be placed at every sink.

Schools aren't the only place ramping up cleaning. FOX 2 has USA Bio Care out every week to protect our employees and guests. Steve Ventura said no item is too small to clean.

"We really go as far as getting into every stapler, every button on the fax machine, copy machine, all their highlighters, writing utensils," he said.

Welcome to the new normal where enhanced cleaning measures will be a necessary part of keeping people protected.