Custodial/Maintenace staff gets ready to wax the floor in the activity room at Fairmont Elementary School. From left: Jacob Flohrs, Forrest Hungerholt, Ryan Majeske.

FAIRMONT — The school buildings may be mostly empty of students during the summer months, but they’re filled with custodial/maintenance staff and the information technology department who are busy getting everything ready for the upcoming school year.

Tyler Garrison, director of buildings and grounds, said that at the start of the summer, his staff clean all of the classrooms from top to bottom in both buildings.

“Then we remove all of the furniture, and scrub and wax the floors,” he said.

The cafeterias, gyms, bathrooms and locker rooms also get a deep clean.

“A lot of people think we have the summer off, too, but we don’t,” Garrison said.

Garrison said at the start of last school year and again this year, they hired an extra custodian at each building to help with sanitizing high traffic areas, such as bathrooms, cafeterias and door handles.

There are 17 full-time employees throughout both buildings. This summer Garrison said they hired three students to help out.

On the maintenance side, staff keep busy during the summer by painting and patching walls, servicing air handlers and changing out filters. They also mow and weed the lawn, do athletic field prep and water the school’s trees.

They’ve also assisted with the CER move from the elementary school to the SMEC building near downtown.

For bigger projects, Garrison said they often have to hire out.

“It depends on what we need permits for and inspections for. Usually we have to hire that stuff out,” Garrison explained.

Over the summer, new ovens were put in the kitchens in both buildings and a new dishwasher was installed at the high school.

“We’re doing a little over a million dollars in roofing this summer,” Garrison said.

He said they were proactive by ordering materials early so it all came in time and they were able to start as soon as the school year ended. The project is almost complete.

“We’ve added LED lighting to our tennis courts,” Garrison said.

He said they hired an electrician that comes two days a week which allows them to do more work without hiring contractors as much.

“We try to do what we can to bring the cost down on some projects,” Garrison said.

Garrison said another big project they’ve been working on is replacing the visitor bleachers at the high school.

“We were hoping to have them in by football time, but they probably won’t be up so we’ll probably use portable bleachers,” Garrison said.

He said they started the project back in January so they locked in a good price for metal, since prices have since risen.

Lee Stewart, Information Technology coordinator for the district, said that the first thing they do at the end of the school year is E-recycling.

“We get rid of the old products that we have,” Stewart said.

Stewart said this year they had the foresight to order new devices in February so they came right at the end of the school year.

“That kind of showed how hard it is to get things. A lot of schools are having difficulty getting devices,” Stewart said.

He said for grades 7-12, it’s a one-to-one ratio of students to devices. At the elementary level there are iPads up to grade 3 and after that students get chrome books. Each teacher and administrator also has devices.

Stewart estimates that there are about 3,000 devices in the district.

During the summer they also help set up rooms for new teachers as well as get them in the system and hooked up with devices.

“We do infrastructure changes. This year we got a new broadband provider, new firewall and had all the training that goes along with it,” Stewart said.

He stressed that security and students’ safety is at the forefront of what they do.

“Everyone is worried about Covid but we’re worried about Covid and people stealing information. We deal with it on a daily basis,” Stewart said.

Along with Stewart, the district’s IT department includes two other full-time employees: Will McAdams and Erik Walker.

Stewart said this summer Walker spent a lot of time refreshing the district’s website.

“To get information, it has to be less than three clicks, otherwise people lose interest,” Stewart said.

The website has a live news feeds, information on registration and upcoming events, contact information for teachers as well as a spotlight on new staff. The website can be found at fairmont.k12.mn.us.