POULSBO — It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy, but not for the North Kitsap School District custodian staff.

When school’s out, it’s time crunch time for the 37 year-round custodians.

“Summer is busy. That’s the time we go in and clean the buildings from top to bottom,” said NKSD custodian supervisor Belinda Schneider while at Vinland Elementary. “There’s so much to do. Take a building this size (Vinland) and have two people clean it top to bottom, every room, every space and that’s a huge job.”

During class time they do basic “cosmetics;” vacuuming, taking out trash, sweeping and cleaning the bathrooms.

Whereas the hot weather months are spent deep cleaning, scrubbing walls and ceiling pipes, washing windows, stripping and waxing the floors, extracting the carpets, cleaning anything and everything they can’t get to during the school year.

The summer is their most crucial cleaning time.

“It’s very important,” said June Estrada, Vinland’s head custodian for 15 years. “To keep the building maintained we need all that time.”

But busy isn’t always bad.

Estrada and Wolfle Elementary’s head custodian Bill Humphries look forward to this time of year. It allows them an opportunity to jam to some music while scrubbing away, and they get to bust out some of their favorite deep cleaning machines — the floor scrubber and auto scrubber, which look similar to a baby elephant.

“You just feel freer during the summertime,” said Estrada who loves cleaning the floors because they shine like glass when she’s done. She’s right on Tuesday Vinland’s multipurpose room floor was so shiny reflections could be seen. “It’s a fun time. We have the run of the school.”

Humphries added, with a little lighthearted summer humor laugh, “We can run down the hallway if we want.”

But there’s no running through the halls, they take their duties very seriously, which is why their called custodians and not janitors.

Humphries, who ensures the restrooms shine whenever he’s done with them because he’s adamant they look good, said a janitor only does basic cleaning and a custodian is the care taker of the school.

In addition to keeping the buildings in sparkling, tip-top healthy shape, the custodians disarm the alarms, put up the flags, file weekly fire system reports, monthly building inspections and help facilitate and keep drill logs for one fire drill a month, intruder drills three times a year and earthquake evacuation drills two times a year.

“We’re responsible for the safety of the building,” said Humphries, who cleans Wolfle’s 14 bathrooms in 90 minutes each day during the year.

The duo, who spends 40 hours a week keeping school, love the look of the floors and bathrooms before anybody’s had a chance to leave their mark, but they know messes happen.

They take it in stride.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Estrada with a shrug of the shoulders. “That’s job security really.”

The custodian staff is also doing their part to keep green.

This summer from July 7 to Aug. 8 they’re working four 10-hour days, 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to conserve on the district’s utility costs. A few years ago they switched to environmentally friendly cleaning products.

“We did it for safety, health and environmental reasons,” Schneider said. “I think it’s really important that we do as a district whatever we can to help the environment and the safety of the staff and students who use our buildings.”