Water drips down and hits the concrete floor. Bats occasionally perch on the dark gray walls. Squeaks come from behind the furnishings.

When I pictured returning to school this summer, half of my thoughts were the dripping water, grime on the floor and the vermin distracting students.

Solutions are hard to come by. Leaks can be traced to the fact that the building is actually a smaller structure with several additions. Adding onto one building increases the chance for cracks and uneven roofing, letting water in.

The only real solution for eradicating the leak issue is rebuilding the school, which is an impractical option.

Exterminators come to spray for cockroaches roughly every four weeks, which seems like enough for now, but there isn’t any way to tell if this will work all year.

What the school really needs is another handful of custodians.

Class sizes are continuing to grow, especially since adding freshman to the high schools, but the number of custodians is waning.

Currently there are nine working, and eight of them work during the evenings, leaving just one for the daytime inconveniences that get reported.

The shortage has created an environment where security guards spend lunch hours keeping food in the lunchroom and cleaning up leftover trays — which isn’t their job

The only way to acquire more custodians would be to work through the school board and attempt to find the money for it, but that doesn’t seem likely.

The most practical way to keep the school clean is for students to take responsibility for their messes.

Too often, students leave food around and spill their drinks without reporting it, so the messes go uncleaned.

It is up to the students to keep their environment clean and uncluttered.