With most school districts all over the country scrambling to cover educational funding shortfalls and increasing class sizes, at least one state governor is publicly questioning why all school districts don't contract custodial services. School district administrators are facing the increasing budget cuts pressure to consider (or reconsider) contracting of those support services that are not related directly to curriculum delivery. Outsourcing custodial or other support services may not be the silver "budget cut" bullet for all education institutions. But experience has shown that successful school districts with in-house programs of moderate size or larger--10 to 15 buildings, 950,000+ square feet, and with generally concise geographic boundaries--have realized a savings of 25 to 40 percent when eliminating in-house services (costs) and outsourcing custodial services. Education institutions that have outsourced custodial services successfully have several things in common--they "front-loaded" their contracting and service delivery process following some common steps with: (1) Accurate and current accounting data of pure custodial services costs; (2) Establishing the cultural/philosophical will to make necessary budget reductions and change the fundamental way they do business; (3) Establishing clear curriculum-focused budgets, spending priorities and accountability; (4) Development of clear and published cleaning standards, staff performance and expectations; (5) Alignment of other support services delivery model to accommodate contracted services; (6) Front-loading the RFP/RFQ contracting process to anticipate future contract reductions; (7) Ongoing evaluation of contractor performance to contracted standards and quality; and (8) Periodic realignment/focusing of internal customer/patron expectations to standards.