Preparing our schools so students can learn
8:55am Wednesday morning at Four Seasons Elementary School: teachers, students, and staff are spread throughout the 40 rooms in the building, pulling out pencils and beginning to sit down to start the day. For them, the school day began five minutes ago, but for Louis Queen, the school’s Chief Custodian, the day started almost four hours earlier.
Arriving by 5:00am, Louis has spent his morning checking the school alarms, monitoring the building’s temperature, and setting up tables in the cafeteria. With his staff of three, Louis makes sure that desks are clean, floors are waxed, and the building is safe, taking care of everything but instruction to make sure the school building is ready for our students to learn.
Like all Chief Custodians, Louis has received extensive training to maintain the equipment in his school.
Louis is one of Anne Arundel County Public School’s (AACPS) 520 custodians who are responsible for the care and maintenance of over 13 million square feet of space spread across 130 buildings. Each custodian cleans 26,000 square feet of space per day, helps maintain the building’s equipment—much of which has been around for decades—and is always on-call to handle everything from adjusting the air conditioning to setting up a meeting room. It is a big responsibility and one that ensures there is never a dull moment on the job.
But while these responsibilities are the most visible part of the job, they are not the most important. Above all else, custodians are responsible for ensuring the safety and security of their buildings and the students and employees within. Custodians check doors in and out of the building throughout the day and they are the first to be called if the alarm goes off. They are the eyes and ears of the school and when schools have evening and weekend events, it is the custodian who is responsible for making sure the school stays safe until the start of the next school day. Strong custodial teams depend on close relationships with their building’s administrators and communicate regularly to touch base about what is going on in and around the school.
Whether it is an alarm that goes off in the middle of the night or a clogged toilet that overflows in the bathroom, custodians take care of the problems that many of us would not want to get near. It takes an incredibly special person to do this job well and the reason our custodians come back year after year is because of the kids.
The evolving role of our custodians
At Four Seasons Elementary, a kindergarten class is walking back from the cafeteria. “Hello Mr. Louis!” one student says as he walks past. “Hey Jayden*,” says Louis, bending down to give him a high five. Behind Jayden almost all of the students wave as they walk by and several jump up for a fist-bump as Louis greets them each by name, asking if they enjoyed their lunch. After nearly 40 years at the school, Louis knows that the job is about the people, a fact clearly visible by his relationship with the students. He knows their names and he makes a point to talk to them when they need help. If a student has had a bad day and is waiting to see an administrator, Louis will stop by on his way through the front office. He will ask about what’s going on and by simply listening, he shows the students how much he cares.
Establishing this relationship helps give our students another person to depend on in the building. Students get new teachers every year, but they often see the same custodians throughout their time at each school. Across the county, more and more administrative teams are reaching out to their custodians to help improve the entire educational environment and support students’ educational experience outside the classroom. From Bates Middle School to Phoenix Academy, custodians are being asked to serve as mentors to students, sometimes forming a stronger relationship with our students than the child has with their teachers or counselor.
In turn, these relationships help improve the school. When students know that their custodians care about them, they will care about keeping the school clean. Ms. Lisa Snyder, one of the administrative assistants at Four Seasons, says that the results of this mutual respect is clearly visible. As a former student of Four Seasons who had Louis as her custodian when she was in school, Lisa says that Loius’ pride in the school is contagious. When students walk in the building they wipe their feet so they don’t drag dirt across the floors and after lunch they help clean up the tables to make it easier for Louis and his team. This help goes a long way to improving the beauty and learning environment of the school. When the school is clean teachers can focus on teaching and students can focus on learning.
No such thing as a Snow Day or Summer Vacation
In the middle of March, the winter’s third snow storm left five inches of snow across the ground. Households across the county got the phone call that every student hoped for the night before: Due to inclement weather, all Anne Arundel County Public Schools and offices will be closed. But for Louis, it’s the second part of the message that is important: Unit III personnel must report to their work locations as required.
As one of those Unit III employees, Louis makes his way to the school to begin the daunting task of clearing the sidewalks so that students can get back to learning as quickly as possible. Working in sub-freezing temperatures, he will shovel the snow and lay down salt and sand both around the school and several blocks down Waugh Chapel Way, the road on which the school sits. Louis also knows that when school is back in session he will need to arrive earlier than usual to re-salt the walkway and make sure all of the ice has been cleared from the path.
While winters are particularly challenging for the custodial team, summers present a different set of responsibilities. With students and teachers out of the building, custodians are able to perform their annual “deep clean,” scrubbing down everything from the lights to the floor. Even with almost-empty buildings, this is a job that takes all summer, especially at the high schools where there may be more than one hundred classrooms to be cleaned. When summer school is in session, custodians double up their work, continuing their summer cleaning while also completing most of the tasks performed during the regular school year.
Working behind the scenes, custodians care for the parts of the building never seen by most employees.
And all of this responsibility—from the daily tasks to the unexpected challenges—often goes unnoticed. What we see is a meeting room that is ready to use and furniture that is clean. But what custodians work hard to make sure we don’t see is the hours of work that went into making sure we can perform our jobs safely in a clean environment. Custodians give 110% and each year their responsibility continues to grow. As reported in Superintendent Dr. George Arlotto’s 2016 Budget Address, since 2010, AACPS has increased by 829,000 square feet of space but has not added any new custodial positions. Each day, custodians are asked to clean 35-50% more than required in other counties, but the most incredible fact is that every day our custodians rise to meet this challenge.
8:55pm Wednesday Night at Four Seasons Elementary School: students have been home for almost 6 hours, but the school’s evening custodian has another 2 hours to go before finishing her day. With the students gone, she goes through her assigned rooms, checking door locks and cleaning sticky desks. Many students won’t even know that she was there, but it is because of them that she dedicates her time and passion to this job. Part of the school’s “silent service,” she joins the team of custodians across the county preparing the school tonight so that tomorrow our students can come to school prepared to learn.
*Students names have been changed in the above story to protect their privacy.
