Career & Technical Education

Summary:

Following the guidance from the State of Connecticut, the CDC, and the local health department, Groton Public Schools has developed the following approach to reflect best practices that reduce the potential exposure to COVID-19:

• Revised daily-cleaning protocols, and altered cleaning frequencies, targeted to those that mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
• Additional disinfection of high-touch surfaces such as door handles, handrails, and elevator buttons in high-traffic, communal-use areas. All rest rooms in school buildings will be sanitized on a continuing basis throughout the day.
• The Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning system in each school will be recommissioned prior to the start of school to ensure that the HVAC systems are operating at their designed capacity.
• Distribution of cleaning/disinfecting materials and instructions for building occupant use for sanitization of areas and equipment before and after uses. 

Definitions:

Cleaning: the removal of dirt, dust, impurities from surfaces.  Cleaning alone does not kill germs and viruses, but the process does remove germs and viruses, decreasing their prevalence, and thus the risk of spreading infection.  Routine cleaning is integral to this mitigation strategy.

Sanitizing: kills germs and viruses via chemical means, though typically disinfectants kill more germs than sanitizers do.  For the purposes of this document, sanitization shall describe any process that “wipes down” a surface, but does not allow for the 10-minute sit time of disinfectant product required for full efficacy. 

Disinfecting the killing of germs and viruses on surfaces by means of an EPA-registered chemical disinfectant.  The chemical must dwell on surface for 10-minutes before removal. This process does not necessarily clean dirty surfaces or remove germs or viruses. Killing germs and viruses remaining on surfaces after cleaning further reduces risk of spreading infection.