Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

District Goes Cordless for Speed and Safety

  • 10/01/18
cordless backpack vacuum

Blue Valley School District was able to eliminate cordrelated safety hazards, increase environmental cleanliness and cut cleaning time nearly in half with ProTeam cordless backpack vacuums.

“It’s just like the name, GoFree; you can go anywhere with it,” says Matthew Brooks, custodial coordinator for Blue Valley School District, one of the major school districts in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The district recently implemented the ProTeam GoFree Flex Pro cordless backpack vacuum to reduce vacuuming time and improve safety.

The district’s 50-plus facilities span 4.4 million square feet of space. Some of the older buildings have limited outlets making it difficult for Brooks’ staff to vacuum the buildings, and he found custodians taking risks to get the job done.

When a custodian cleans with the Go-Free Flex Pro cordless backpack vacuum, cord-related risks are eliminated and cleaning is significantly faster.

Vacuuming used to take three hours for 18 to 20 classrooms, including hallways. The cordless backpack vacuum reduced that to two hours. Since the staff has been using the GoFree, the time-savings is approaching 40 percent.

The time saved from using cordless backpack vacuums has gone to dusting, spot cleaning carpets and sanitizing desktops daily rather than every other day. The custodians also switched from rags to backpack vacuums for dusting. According to Brooks, backpacks are more effective at capturing dust.

The reallocation of time to improve cleaning has had measurable results. One school was hovering around a 2.5 on the APPA scale (one is the highest standard of cleanliness and five is the lowest). Implementing the cordless backpack vacuums improved the school’s score to 2.0.

“If you’re not maintaining your building so your students have a safe and clean environment, it hurts their ability to learn,” says Brooks.

proteam.emerson.com

This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management October 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Doerr School of Sustainability Accelerator

    From Concrete Warehouse to Innovation Hub: Accelerating Sustainability at Stanford

    The transformation of a once windowless, concrete publishing warehouse into a sun-drenched center for global innovation began with a single, fundamental challenge: how to turn an industrial storage shell into a space built for human connection.

  • Dallas ISD Voters Approve $6.2B Bond Package

    Dallas ISD voters have approved a record-setting $6.2-billion bond package that district leaders say will modernize aging campuses, eliminate portable classrooms and reshape learning environments across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

  • Tennessee Middle School Completes Health, Life Safety Renovations

    The Giles County Board of Education in Pulaski, Tenn., recently announced that a series of renovation projects has been completed at Bridgeforth Middle School, according to a news release. The district partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers and Brindley Construction to modernize building systems at one of the district’s oldest schools.

  • Northeastern University Breaks Ground on New Housing Community

    Northeastern University recently announced the groundbreaking of a new student housing community on its campus in Boston, Mass., according to a news release. The university is partnering with American Campus Communities (ACC) for development of the project, which will have the capacity for 1,200 students and has a scheduled completion date of fall 2028.