With all the consternation and conflict about schools lately, I think it is important to take a moment to appreciate some of the people who make schools work. School custodians are as important as anyone in educating our children and keeping them safe and healthy. They use their inherent knowledge of logistics, chemistry, geometry, and a good deal of psychology to keep our schools running smoothly every day. If kids are uncomfortable — if a classroom is gross, a bathroom disgusting, or classroom is overheated or stuffy — they can’t focus and it’s hard to learn.
If you have children, think about their worst days. Maybe they felt sick and threw up. Maybe they acted out and broke something. Or maybe they were just curious and mischievous and concocted a fantastic “recipe” that got all over everywhere. Think of the time you spent cleaning it up. Now fill a school with about 300 of those kids. There is a very good chance that one of those kids will be having that day, every day. Without custodians efficiently removing the impact of that one child’s worst day, it would quickly cascade through the population and havoc would reign.
Many think that because school is out, custodians have summers off. In fact, summer is crunch time! I had the opportunity this past summer to work on a heating, cooling, and ventilation upgrade project in one of Northampton’s elementary schools, and my interactions with the Leeds custodial staff was a real education. At the beginning of the summer, we asked them to move everything out of the classrooms and into the cafeteria. After we finished with installations, they deep cleaned the classrooms — as they do every summer. But before they were able to clean and wax the floors, we needed them to move all the bookshelves, and desks, and chairs, and science experiments and classroom decorations out of the cafeteria to provide access there. They moved half the stuff of an entire elementary school into the hallways in one long afternoon and into the evening. The complex spatial logic required to make this work while allowing full passage in the halls was like a combination of 3-D Tetris and Jenga.
Millie moved a fully loaded institutional-steel teachers desk single-handed. Xristina and Jeff sent trains of filled bookshelves on skate-board dollies up and down the halls. They kept in track of which materials went in which classrooms, and the specific preferences of each teacher. They accommodated the need to complete a major installation over the summer while the students were out, while still accomplishing their basic requirement to clean classrooms from top to bottom and polish the floors. Never once did they say “that’s not my job.”
Now that the new heating system is in place, they have kept me informed about issues and occupant comfort as we fine-tune settings. It’s not their job, but they do it with generosity, kindness, and attention to detail. If it happens in their school building, they make sure it goes well.
Ben Weil lives in Leeds.