Maintaining a large building – especially one that has existed since the early 1990s – isn’t an easy task. Just ask the custodial staff of Wareham High School.

The staff of five has been working eight hours a day, six days a week, to prepare for the school to open on Aug. 31, custodian Ricky Cleveland said.

“When summer school is out, then you have to go real crazy, because then you only have a week or two, before school starts again,” Cleveland said. “We go at a good pace, but you get to that point where you have to really pick up the pace. And it’s every room … everything gets touched.”

High School Principal Scott Palladino said maintenance of the almost-25-year-old building, which he estimates to cost about $100,000, is “my number two or three expense” behind teachers’ salaries.

“[The school] is 600 or 700 times the size of a house,” Palladino said. “We have done a lot to make the building as efficient as possible. … We have a 10-year plan on maintenance, and we are a little behind, but the roof was a big project, in many ways.”

The school’s roof was just replaced earlier this year, a project Palladino said the district started saving for five or six years prior to the project.

While there are a number of other issues in the building that need attention, such as the treads on the stairs, the ventilation units, and the old boilers, Palladino said the building is purposefully fixed in waves.

“We try not to fix it all at once, because then it all breaks all at once,” Palladino said. “We have done a decent job of staying on top of maintenance – certainly a testament to our custodians and maintenance crew, and the subcontractors we hire, as well.”

Cleveland said the staff has a system it goes through to do a basic clean of a room, which starts with taking apart a room, and wiping down all the furniture, computers, and anything else in the room.

“Then, we take all the furniture out, and … clean all the lights, clean the walls, windows, vents,” Cleveland said. “Then, once that’s out, we strip all the wax off the floors, let it dry, put about three coats of wax on the floors, and put all the furniture back in.”

Head Custodian Rene Nascimento said the biggest challenge they face is not the physical labor itself, but remembering where all the furniture was, before they moved it.

“If we don’t, the teachers will drag [the furniture], and it scratches the floors,” Nascimento said.

By Cleveland’s account, the system has been working well for them – he said visitors from out of town are surprised when they hear how old the building is.

“We’ll have people come in from out of town, and they will look at the school and say how great it looks,” Cleveland said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, this school is only five or 10 years old?’ and when we tell them it’s [almost 25] years old, they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”