One of the biggest benefits of attending the ISSA conference is getting to meet people face-to-face. That’s especially true for our clients, who we usually speak to over video calls and email. So when Sharon Boyd, the Supervisor of Custodial Services for the Newport News Public Schools team, told us she’d be in Las Vegas for the conference, we jumped at the chance to connect.
Using OrangeQC, the Newport News Public Schools custodial team went from sporadic pen-and-paper inspections to doing regularly inspections at every building. That quality control data fuels training, provides the backbone of a team incentive program, and increases trust at all levels, from administration to the community.
Boyd graciously shared some of the smart moves and best practices her team is using to build transparency and trust, including with the custodial staff themselves.
How Sharon Boyd Joined Newport News Public Schools
Those family and community connections fueled Boyd’s decision to work in the public school system.
“I could go where I would like to go, but I chose Newport News because I live in the city of Newport News. I’m not overly political, but I do believe in giving back and making the best of where I work,” she told us.
She joined the school system with a plan to work there until retirement, investing in the community where she and her family live.
Before OrangeQC: Pen and Paper Inspections
When Boyd joined the Newport News Public Schools team about three years ago, the custodial department was using a paper inspection system with yes/no answers.
“No one was managing it, and it was not quantitative at all,” she recalls.
That made it hard to get an accurate picture of cleaning quality at any given time.
How Digital Tools Unlocked Incentives, Training, and Transparency
Boyd had used OrangeQC in her time at Olympus Building Services. From
that experience, she knew it worked well to reveal “what we were doing
well, what we needed to improve on, and what just wasn’t working at
all.”
Crucially, the tools were adaptable enough to fit the unique needs of
the public school environment. “We can tailor OrangeQC to our needs,”
she said. “You can literally take the program and make it what it is
that you need it to be.”
Boyd joined Newport News in October of 2022 and “within a month, I
contacted OrangeQC,” she said. “We were full swing by November.”
Incentives and Employee Recognition
“We’ve taken the program and we’ve made it into our own,” Boyd said. “We use it for incentives; we do our Clean School Award with it.”

The Clean School Award goes to the five top-performing schools or locations out of the district’s 53 total sites. Each location is inspected at least once a month, and scores are sent out mid-year so everyone can see who’s on track.
Next, the team plans to extend that recognition to top-performing custodians as well.
“We’re now going to go one step further, which I think is exciting,” Boyd said. “We’re going to use it to now do another incentive, and that’s going to be pulling out individual assignments to see who was the best custodian.”
Training and Improvement
The data gathered during inspections helps the team’s Custodial Training Specialist hone in on specific issues. For example, if dusting kept coming up as deficient, she would talk to the training specialist and come up with a plan to focus on dusting standards and techniques for the month.
Photos taken during inspections are especially helpful for the team, serving as visual teaching tools to identify problems and showcase what the result should look like.
“It lets us see where we need to train more.”
The custodial team is able to see all of the inspection data. Leadership will sit down with them at the end of the month and review their performance as a group. (If a specific employee is having issues, leadership handles that separately.)
On the flip side, Boyd said she’s also used the data as part of employee PIPs (performance improvement plans). The inspections serve as a teaching tool to help the employee see exactly what’s not meeting standards, as well as a digital record of the issues.
However, she stressed that the point of inspections is to lift the overall cleaning quality. If a team member addresses a ticket and brings quality up, she’s more than happy to adjust the score.
Transparency and Communication
Public school districts require custodial teams to navigate relationships at every turn. From the superintendent and board of education to the principals, teachers, and even parents at the school level — as well as all the students who fill the buildings each day — each role brings its own needs and concerns to the table.
The Newport News Public Schools custodial team is improving communication on all of those levels with a big commitment to collecting and sharing information on each building in the school system.
At every level of the school system, people have been excited to receive the inspection results. The district superintendent can access the reporting dashboard to monitor progress in real-time, while principals get monthly summaries, which they share with teachers.
“The principals get the scores because they are so into this… They can also see what’s not going good, what’s going well, and what do we need to improve on. “ Boyd said the end-of-month summaries are now included in the SOP for the custodial team.
The department has even shared data with local parents who want to know more about the team’s efforts.
“We don’t hide that from the parents,” Boyd said, and called the reports “another avenue” for communication.
What’s Next: Expanded Use
As the Newport News team continues to refine their quality control process, they’re looking forward to expanding OrangeQC beyond custodial. The maintenance department is considering adopting it, while their environmental safety specialist is on track to start using the software to make taking pictures and comparing scores easier.
Looking to refine the quality control process for your team? See how OrangeQC empowers other facilities teams at K-12 districts.