Whatever your political persuasion, the Obama Administration’s recently proposed American Jobs Act contains a component worthy of consideration.
The $447 billion spending bill contains a provision to provide $25 billion to specifically upgrade the infrastructure of our K-12 schools. Make note this is not funding that will be used for teacher salaries. There is a different provision for that. After years of sinking maintenance budgets and deferring critical maintenance and repairs, the infrastructure provision seems to make sense.
Whether the politically charged environment will lead to passing of the American Jobs Act remains to be seen. The debate will most likely center around whether spending massive amounts of government money will kick start the economy and reduce unemployment. Both political parties understand the public is demanding that something be done.
Spending that targets upgrading and repairing the infrastructure of our schools is a sound investment. Our future quality of life and competitiveness in the world depends on educating our youth. To quote former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:
Read the Fact Sheet / Press Release from the Administration http://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/WH-on-School-Construction.pdf
According to the fact sheet, the funds can be used for a range of emergency repair and renovation projects, greening and energy efficiency upgrades, asbestos abatement and removal, and modernization efforts to build new science and computer labs and to upgrade the technology infrastructure in our schools.
One thing that everyone in the cleaning industry is painfully aware of is that cleaning and maintenance budgets continue to shrink. Although we work hard to help reduce costs through more efficient processes and tools, productivity gains have not offset the loss of manpower. The result, schools in disrepair that are dirtier and less healthy for students, teachers, employees and visitors. Not good!
At Multi-Clean, we continue to advocate and provide resources that help our distributors support their school customers to implement green cleaning. We also continue to work hard on dispelling the myth that green cleaning will cost more. Implemented properly and focusing on the process can actually improve cleanliness without costing more. In fact, in many cases, the resulting efficiencies can cost less. We are proud to be a sponors of the Healthy Schools Campaign QUICK AND EASY GUIDE TO GREEN CLEANING and will be launching our own GREEN CLEANING ADVISOR SCHOOLS EDITION in October.
Multi-Clean is a Proud SponosorGreen Cleaning Advisor is a training and education program for Multi-Clean authorized distributors sales reps to educate and provide the resource tools to assist their customers in the implementation and ongoing management of a green cleaning program.
Click here for a sneak preview of the program
