Easy Solutions to Enhance Your School Floor Care Program

March 8, 2024

Did you know that 78% of students believe that a lack of cleanliness in their schools negatively impacts their health? Maintaining a clean school is vital to the well-being of students, teachers, and staff.

A big part of maintaining a clean school is having a comprehensive floor care program.

An effective floor care program can reduce allergens and pathogens, prevent safety hazards, and protect your hard floors. By properly maintaining school floors, you provide building occupants with the comfort, safety, and pleasing visuals necessary to promote a positive learning environment.

So, when was the last time you evaluated your floor care program?

If your floors are looking dull and dirty throughout the school year, it may be time to overhaul your school floor care program. Doing so can help make your floors shine and the cleaning staff more satisfied.

In this article, we’ll cover three ways you can enhance your school floor care program. Let’s dive right in.

3 Ways to Enhance Your School Floor Care Program

Our experts have identified three easy ways you can enhance your school floor care program.

Consolidate Your Floor Care Products
Adopt an Integrated Floor Care System
Utilize All Available School Floor Care Training Resources

Let’s take a closer look.

1. Consolidate Your Floor Care Products

Did you know that you don’t need different cleaning products for different substrates?

Substrates are the supporting underlying surfaces that flooring materials are applied to. There are several different types commonly used such as vinyl, composite, linoleum, concrete, rubber, stone, brick, and slate.

While there are floor care products on the market that are designed to work for just one specific substrate, there are also products that are compatible with many different substrates. This can help take the guesswork out of which chemicals to use for different flooring in a facility.

Switching to products compatible with all your floor types also helps save time and makes the school cleaning supply closet easier to navigate. When selecting products, conduct thorough research to select quality products that are both compatible and effective for your flooring types.

SC Johnson Professional has technical expertise in school floor care and can provide products that have been designed to meet your specific needs. Take, for example, SC Johnson Professional’s Heavy Duty Neutral pH Floor & Surface Cleaner.

Heavy Duty Neutral pH Floor & Surface Cleaner

Specially formulated for daily maintenance and deep scrubbing, it works on a variety of flooring types and hard, non-porous surfaces such as walls and countertops made of granite, marble, laminate and quartz. Its neutral pH formula cleans without dulling and leaves no residue behind.

It provides excellent gloss retention and helps maintain the floor’s high level of appearance with reduced maintenance frequency. Even better, it eliminates the need for multiple floor cleaning products due to its wide range of use from daily cleaning to deep scrubbing before recoating. This can help save time by eliminating multiple cleaning solutions for staff to navigate.

Meanwhile, if you’re in need of a product that can effectively tackle stubborn heel marks, scuffs, scratches, and other blemishes, check out SC Johnson Professional’s EZ CARE Heavy Duty Scrub Pad.

EZ CARE Heavy Duty Scrub Pad

When it comes to scuffed and scratched floors many school facility managers may quickly assume that it’s time to strip the floors. However, there are heavy-duty scrub pads that work to clean and shine these imperfections away with ease.

Scrub pads help support daily maintenance to buff out common pain points to help floors continue to look their best.

This dual-purpose pad cleans and shines in one step. One side easily adheres to equipment, while the other scrub side is used for more abrasive cleaning on coated surfaces. It’s designed for everyday maintenance and can be used on a variety of substrates to help save time by not having to strip the floor as often.

2. Adopt an Integrated Floor Care System

Stripping floors is a common restorative floor care technique that completely removes floor finish.

It’s performed to create the foundation for a fresh coating, while also removing marks, scratches, and debris build-up from the floor. It’s widely known as a time-consuming and labor-intensive, but essential, method to prolong the life of flooring.

However, there is technology that enables cleaning staff to achieve freshly finished school floors without that intensive, physical task. Look for a system that is easy to install and maintain to help employees easily keep floors shining around the clock.

Consider implementing the EZ CARE Floor Care System by SC Johnson Professional.

EZ CARE Floor Care System

This integrated floor care system allows users to achieve a durable, high-gloss finish, without having to manually strip floors.

It includes a patent-pending polymer-blend floor coating that can be easily removed with an auto scrubber and floor coating remover. Compared to conventional stripping, this method helps reduce labor costs and saves time.

All products in the system have a light fresh scent making it ideal for use in scent-sensitive environments, such as educational facilities. Engineered to help simplify and enhance the user experience, maintenance professionals can refinish floors on a routine basis, with ease, without having to wait for lengthy school breaks to complete the task.

The system integrates into existing workflows and requires minimal training to help keep floors looking their best with minimal downtime.

The EZ Care Floor Care System works in just three simple steps:

Begin with a bare floor and polish it using the EZ Care High Speed Conditioning and Polish Pad to smooth the substrate. Using no more than four coats of EZ Care Floor Coating you can achieve a durable, high-gloss shine on a variety of substrates.
Maintain the floor’s high gloss appearance with the EZ Care Heavy Duty Scrub Pad that effectively removes scuffs, scratches and black heel marks along with the SC Johnson Professional’s Neutral pH Floor Cleaner.
When it’s time to refinish the floor, add the EZ Care Floor Coating Remover to an auto scrubber and remove up to four coats of EZ Care Floor Coating in one pass, returning the floor to bare.

3. Utilize All Available School Floor Care Training Resources

When updating your school floor care program, training is essential for employee safety and to achieve the best results. In addition to hands-on training, utilize supplementary training resources that employees can easily reference to reinforce protocol.

Regardless of whether products are easy to use, effective training is an ongoing process and even the most seasoned employees may require a refresher. For example, consider placing signage and wall charts in supply closets that utilize images to depict the correct way to use products. Doing so encourages employees to regularly reference the directions printed on product packaging.

You also want to take advantage of training materials available on manufacturer websites. Resources may include literature and videos that can be used to reinforce proper procedure and chemical usage learned during hands-on training.

Utilizing a variety of training resources that may be available helps to ensure products are continuously being used correctly by staff.

Final Thoughts

School floors are a significant investment that requires routine maintenance tasks that have historically been physically demanding and time-consuming. By staying updated with the latest floor maintenance products and technology, you can simplify the process to help make difficult tasks less strenuous, while still achieving the same sparkling results.

For more information, visit SC Johnson Professional’s education page at https://www.scjp.com/en-us/education-sector.