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School Cleaning Services in New Hampshire

New Hampshire has 197 operating school districts running 501 schools for 163,697 students. Janitors and cleaners in the state earn a median of $18.82 an hour — about 6% above the national median of $17.71. That wage is the single biggest driver of what a cleaning contract costs here.

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197
School districts
501
Schools
$18.82
Median janitor wage, hourly
9,420
Janitors employed statewide

What cleaning costs in New Hampshire

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, New Hampshire$18.82/hr
Loaded wage (payroll taxes, workers comp, PTO, uniforms, training — ×1.22)$22.96/hr
Paid hours per year, incl. 12% relief factor2,721 hrs
Direct labour$62,479
Site lead, consumables, equipment, supervision, QC, vehicle$33,700
Summer deep clean$13,093
Indicative annual price, Level 4 with summer deep clean$136,500
Per square foot, per month$0.190

The same building at three service levels

APPA service levelHours/nightPer year$/sq ft/mo
APPA Level 2 — ordinary tidiness 20.6$186,0000.258
APPA Level 3 — casual inattention 15.4$154,0000.214
APPA Level 4 — what most districts buy 12.6$136,5000.190

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 New Hampshire districts are small — and that changes who can serve them

Of the 197 districts in New Hampshire, 176 (89%) 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 NHShare
1-213066%
3-54623%
6-10179%
11-2032%
21-5011%
50+00%

Janitorial pay across New Hampshire

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$14.45Entry rate; high turnover territory
25th$16.98Common contract-cleaning start rate
Median$18.82Where a retention-minded bid sits
75th$22.66Leads and specialist floor techs
90th$24.65Supervisors and skilled trades
Housekeeping supervisor, median$26.54Site lead cost

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 37-2011, cross-industry. Mean hourly for New Hampshire is $19.76 — a different statistic from the median and usually higher.

Largest districts in New Hampshire

DistrictCountySchoolsStudents
Manchester School DistrictHillsborough County2011,949
Nashua School DistrictHillsborough County219,813
Bedford School DistrictHillsborough County63,971
Londonderry School DistrictRockingham County63,962
Concord School DistrictMerrimack County73,852
Rochester School DistrictStrafford County103,828
Salem School DistrictRockingham County83,560
Dover School DistrictStrafford County53,537
Merrimack School DistrictHillsborough County63,460
Timberlane Regional School DistrictRockingham County73,227
Keene School DistrictCheshire County73,029
Derry Cooperative School DistrictRockingham County73,015

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

Private and independent schools in New Hampshire

Alongside the public system, New Hampshire has 173 private schools teaching 16,273 students, averaging 94 pupils each. 97 of them have fewer than 50 students. 33 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 New Hampshire, cleaned nightly at Level 4 with the summer block and sitting inside a route with three or four other accounts, runs around $35,500 a year (0.186/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 New Hampshire

How we work in New Hampshire

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.