by Lauren Jefferson

When Somerville High School opens Sept. 8, the students and teachers will find a different looking building with cleaner walls, brighter floors and without 20 pounds of discarded gum.

“It’s a marked improvement on what it was,” said Anne J. Roach, who teaches a video class at the high school.

“In some cases what’s being cleaned are places that haven’t been cleaned in several years,” said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone.

Everything in the building has been cleaned thoroughly, from over 20 pounds of chewed gum scattered through out the hallways, to the floors that are being stripped and waxed for the first time in 4 years. Even the graffiti in the bathrooms has been removed, nothing was over looked, said Michael Foley, the new superintendent of school facilities.

For the eight weeks of summer vacation up to eight custodians worked daily to get the school in the best condition possible for the students up coming year, Foley said.

The city plans to keep the school in its new pristine state once the school year is under way. When gum, wads of wet paper towel and graffiti are seen around the school they will be taken care of as soon as possible, the mayor said. “The directive is when that goes up it comes down.”

Things will be running more efficiently then they have in the past, said Francis P. Santangelo, the city’s superintendent of buildings and grounds. “Before, I got all the calls about problems with the schools and couldn’t do anything about it.”

With the custodians now under his jurisdiction things will be able to get done a lot quicker, he said.