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School Cleaning Services in Idaho

Idaho has 190 operating school districts running 796 schools for 315,453 students. Janitors and cleaners in the state earn a median of $17.36 an hour — about 2% below the national median of $17.71. That wage is the single biggest driver of what a cleaning contract costs here.

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190
School districts
796
Schools
$17.36
Median janitor wage, hourly
10,800
Janitors employed statewide

What cleaning costs in Idaho

Work the arithmetic from the wage rather than from a price list. A typical 60,000 sq ft elementary school has roughly 51,420 sq ft of cleanable floor. At APPA Service Level 4 — the level most districts actually buy — that is about 12.6 productive hours a night, five nights a week across 185 session nights plus break coverage.

Median wage, Idaho$17.36/hr
Loaded wage (payroll taxes, workers comp, PTO, uniforms, training — ×1.22)$21.18/hr
Paid hours per year, incl. 12% relief factor2,721 hrs
Direct labour$57,632
Site lead, consumables, equipment, supervision, QC, vehicle$33,700
Summer deep clean$13,093
Indicative annual price, Level 4 with summer deep clean$130,500
Per square foot, per month$0.181

The same building at three service levels

APPA service levelHours/nightPer year$/sq ft/mo
APPA Level 2 — ordinary tidiness 20.6$176,0000.244
APPA Level 3 — casual inattention 15.4$146,5000.204
APPA Level 4 — what most districts buy 12.6$130,5000.181

Budgeting estimate, not a quotation. Assumes contractor-supplied consumables and no day porter; a full-time day porter typically adds $30,000–$55,000 a year. Wage from BLS OEWS May 2025. Burden, relief factor and overhead multipliers are industry estimates and vary by employer. The real number comes from a timed walk-through.

Most Idaho districts are small — and that changes who can serve them

Of the 190 districts in Idaho, 154 (81%) run five schools or fewer. National contractors are built around large portfolios; a district with two or three buildings is usually served better, and priced better, by a contractor who is not spreading regional management across eighty sites.

Schools in the districtDistricts in IDShare
1-211661%
3-53820%
6-10179%
11-20137%
21-5042%
50+21%

Janitorial pay across Idaho

Contract cleaning competes for the same labour pool as in-house custodial staff. These are the percentiles that set your floor:

PercentileHourlyWhat it means for a bid
10th$13.65Entry rate; high turnover territory
25th$15.50Common contract-cleaning start rate
Median$17.36Where a retention-minded bid sits
75th$19.00Leads and specialist floor techs
90th$23.56Supervisors and skilled trades
Housekeeping supervisor, median$23.27Site lead cost

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 37-2011, cross-industry. Mean hourly for Idaho is $18.01 — a different statistic from the median and usually higher.

Largest districts in Idaho

DistrictCountySchoolsStudents
JOINT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 2Ada County6238,740
BOISE INDEPENDENT DISTRICTAda County5222,134
BONNEVILLE JOINT DISTRICTBonneville County2613,577
NAMPA SCHOOL DISTRICTCanyon County2212,689
POCATELLO DISTRICTBannock County2411,448
VALLIVUE SCHOOL DISTRICTCanyon County1310,339
IDAHO FALLS DISTRICTBonneville County229,903
COEUR D'ALENE DISTRICTKootenai County189,609
TWIN FALLS DISTRICTTwin Falls County189,000
ONEIDA COUNTY DISTRICTOneida County58,702
JEFFERSON COUNTY JOINT DISTRICTJefferson County116,591
POST FALLS DISTRICTKootenai County125,779

NCES Common Core of Data 2024 via the Urban Institute Education Data Portal.

Private and independent schools in Idaho

Alongside the public system, Idaho has 152 private schools teaching 22,912 students, averaging 151 pupils each. 79 of them have fewer than 50 students. 20 are Catholic. These buy differently from districts: no sealed-bid statute, no board warrant cycle, and a business manager who can agree a scope in a fortnight.

A 16,000 sq ft independent school in Idaho, cleaned nightly at Level 4 with the summer block and sitting inside a route with three or four other accounts, runs around $34,500 a year (0.180/sq ft/month). Small buildings price above the per-square-foot rate quoted for large ones — supervision, equipment and insurance do not scale down with the floor area.

NCES Private School Universe Survey 2023-24.

How private school cleaning works →

Metro areas we cover in Idaho

How we work in Idaho

We clean schools with crews we employ directly in the markets we staff, and through vetted partner contractors everywhere else. Either way you sign one contract with us, you get one point of contact, and we carry the insurance and the background-check obligation. When you ask for a quote we will tell you which of the two it would be in your town — before you sign, not after.

Every person who enters a school is screened before their first shift, whatever the state statute requires. Scope is written to a named APPA service level with a work-loading table showing the hours behind it, so you can see exactly what you are buying instead of comparing two numbers on a bid tab.