WACO, Texas — Waco ISD is taking every precaution to ensure students and staff are safe from spreading flu-related illnesses. With many districts in the area recently canceling classes because of this, Waco ISD is getting ahead of the curb with these deep cleaning robots.
- These robots deep-clean schools across the district during the nighttime hours, making it easier for these devices to roam around.
- Five PUDU CC1 robots and three larger ones help keep Waco ISD clean.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
It’s more than just a friendly face.
“It’s going to be a supplement and help in deep cleaning,” Alex Villanueva, Director of Facilities at Waco ISD, said.
With the surge in flu and other diseases in our area, school districts across Central Texas have been canceling classes.
To date, this doesn't include the Waco ISD and this small, yet mighty machine might have a little something to do with it.
“This type of equipment does an intense cleaning in carpet areas, extracting a lot of dirt you don’t see, the same thing with the outside floors. It does scrubbing, it does mopping, it’s a good product to introduce to schools just because it will help us with that deep clean,” Villanueva said.
It’s the PUDU Intelligent Commercial Cleaning Robot- sweeping deep to wipe out whatever's happening.
“So right now, we do have with the diversion that you saw, we do have five of those, we have three more larger ones, in our larger schools,” Villanueva said.
“It’s running at night when the school is empty— that way, they can have more efficiency, and they can clean better without people in the building when it’s unoccupied,” he said.
Alex Villanueva and the district said that this robot is a game-changer.
“Once we get a notification that the school has reached ‘X’ amount of percentage with the population suffering from flu or any other type of disease, then we’ll go into the campus, and we’ll do a deep clean to those areas and mitigate and eliminate more people getting sick,” Villanueva said.
The more illumination, the less worry about what could come.
If we start to notice clusters of illnesses, so more than 20 percent in any given classroom or sports team, something like that when students are congregating often, once they hit that 20 percent threshold of a diagnosed illness, so 20 percent of the kids have flu or strep, we’ll have our custodians come in and do a deep-cleaning of the areas that they’re using,” Rhiannon Settles, Director of Health Services at Waco ISD said.
Keeping students and staff safe.
“This becomes their home—a lot of them get structure in our school district, so it is important to keep everybody safe and for everybody to be healthy and for them to have a good experience once they come into each of our campuses,” Villanueva said.
