New survey results from the American Cleaning Institute (ACI) show that while most parents give their child’s school positive marks for cleanliness, shared spaces where hygiene matters most, such as restrooms and cafeterias, remain top concerns. These results underscore the essential role cleaning plays in creating school environments where students can learn, eat and gather with confidence. And as families prepare for a new school year, parents are paying attention to the cleanliness and maintenance of their children’s schools.

While 39% of parents with children in school rated the school’s cleanliness level as excellent, most felt there was room for improvement. Among the areas of concern identified were:

• Restrooms (50%)
• Cafeterias (34%)
• Classrooms (25%)
• Gyms and locker rooms (20%)
• Common areas (16%)
• Buses (15%)

“Cleanliness is not just a maintenance issue; it is part of the broader back-to-school checklist that helps reassure parents that schools are prepared to welcome students back,” said Kristin DiNicolantonio, ACI’s senior director, stakeholder communications. “Parents want to know that the places where their children learn, eat and play are being cared for. Strong cleaning and hygiene practices help support healthier school communities and keep students focused on learning.”

ACI encourages families and school communities to keep cleaning and hygiene top of mind throughout the school year by reinforcing handwashing, keeping frequently touched surfaces clean and using cleaning and disinfecting products as directed. Parents can reinforce proper handwashing at key moments, including before eating and after using the restroom, and include hand sanitizer in back-to-school supplies for older children.

Cleaning is a foundational part of a successful school year. School staff and parents can get more resources on supporting hand hygiene and cleaning best practices in their school system at HealthySchoolsHealthyPeople.org.

A recent Pew Research Center study found 10% of websites show significant signs of artificial intelligence (AI) authorship. Researchers found an upward trend that began in late 2022, when ChatGPT was first released, and continued as other AI chatbots such as Claude and Gemini followed. Gradually, the share of webpages showing signs of AI authorship increased.

As researchers filtered out old webpages and only examined pages published after the release of ChatGPT, they found that one-third of pages showed signs of AI authorship.

AI-authored text is not evenly spread across the web. In samples from this year, around one-in-ten pages with a .com domain show signs of AI authorship—about double the share on .org domains (4.6%), and 10 times the rate on .edu or .gov domains (both around 1%).

While Pew said AI detection models aren’t perfect, AI test does use certain types of punctuation, and certain words and phrases show up at much higher rates in AI-generated content than in text written by humans. For example, AI models are more likely than human authors to list items in threes and to use em dashes.

Furthermore, Pew research found most Americans (76%) feel strongly that it’s important to be able to tell if pictures, videos or text were made by AI or by humans. Yet many (53%) don’t trust their own ability to spot AI-generated content.