By Kristina Esserian, Global Issues Junior Division Head, and Morgan Maselli, Staff Writer.

Greetings, LCA student body! The Blue and White is here to remind you of the importance of keeping our school clean! Our custodians work very hard and provide tremendous effort to maintain both cleanliness and organization around our school. In order to make their job run smoothly, we can fulfill our roles as students. This includes simple tasks such as cleaning up after ourselves, staying organized, and following school guidelines. To make this job easier for you, there is a chart below with some popular locations throughout the school that need more improvement in care!

  Location                        Proper Etiquette

Bathrooms	General cleanliness,Don’t Forget: the bathroom has a use; it’s not a student lounge 🙂
Cafeteria	Throwing away all trash, and properly wiping down the tables.
Library	Don’t leave your backpack or supplies unattended, if leaving the library.Remember: No eating in the library!
Classrooms	Use the trash and recycling bins (paper goes in the blue bin), remember to leave with what you came with, throw away any trash left behind, keep the desks organized, and most importantly, respect your peers!
Hallways	Keep backpacks and books organized, pick up trash, and do not touch or move other people’s belongings.
Locker rooms	Stay neat and organized, and don’t take other people’s belongings.Lockers are there for your use, but make sure to clean them out periodically.
Gym	Properly put away equipment: This includes med kits, water bottles, pinnies, balls, etc.

Each of these spaces have a specific function for the students, so it is our job to keep them clean. 

• The library is used as a study area, a classroom, and a computer lab. 
• The cafeteria is where we eat, but is often used as a study space – you wouldn’t want food all over your work! 
• The gym is where students have sports practices and games, but also functions as a space for school related conferences.
• The hallway is crowded with numerous students and teachers, so it is not a great idea to leave items lying around.

Although, as a newspaper, we could report some of the more unseemly events that have happened within our walls, we’d prefer to leave those in the past. Instead, we wanted to publish some ideas on how to help our custodians care for our space. LCA as a whole has left the custodians with many unpleasant situations: food on the floor surrounded by ants, students’ belongings left in unsuitable places like the bathroom, spilled drinks (left uncleaned), the list goes on and on. We, as the LCA student body, are much more capable of cleaning after ourselves, yet our efforts don’t always communicate this. Simply paying more attention to our surroundings, belongings, and responsibilities around the building will help ensure a more hospitable environment for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. After all, our custodians work extremely hard day in and day out to do the same, so the least we can do is make their job run just a bit more smoothly!