The School District’s Maintenance Staff—

Taking On The Biggest Cleaning Jobs In Town

By Martha Coville

Keeping the hallways at Newtown High School clean is a full-time job. Head custodian Jim Young says his staff takes the scrubbing machine to the floors every night. How long does it take one man to buff the corridors of a 285,000 square foot school to shiny gloss? About eight hours. The Bee sat down with Mr Young and Gino Faiella, the district’s supervisor of buildings and grounds, to find out what it is like picking up after 1,700 teenagers every day.

Every homeowner has had a morning ruined by an overflowing toilet, and anyone used to living in the country knows what persistent visitors mice are. Multiply those problems a thousand times over, and you can begin to understand the daily challenges that face the school district’s maintenance staff.

Mr Faiella’s staff maintains the district’s seven schools and, according to him, “preventative maintenance” is what it is all about. The minor household emergencies that stop us all in our tracks really do not bother him.

 “It is the same thing,” Mr Faiella said, “But it doesn’t affect us the same way.” For one thing, he is completely prepared for the unexpected. He explained that the district has an electrician, a carpenter, and a plumber on staff. If they cannot handle a particular problem — pest extermination, for example requires a special license — then they contract it out. “We also have emergency contractors,” he said, whom they call, say, if a boiler needs to be looked at during the night.

Mr Faiella has a background maintaining corporate facilities, and as he says, “Buildings are buildings. It helps cheer people up to see a cleaner environment. No one wants to be in a dingy environment.” He supervises the head custodians at all Newtown schools. “I try to get to every school, every day,” he said. “At the very least, I see everyone a couple of times a week.” He said he performs evaluations of the custodians’ work, not in a punitive fashion, but because “it always helps to have a second set of eyes. There’s always something someone might have missed.”

The other important aspect of Mr Faiella’s work is equipment inspection. When Mr Young said that it is important to inspect everything “just in case,” Mr Faiella reminded him that he sees things approaching the end of their useful lives every day. In this aspect, his job closely resembles that of the homeowner, who needs to know the lifespan of everything from a cheap coffee maker to the roofing.

But the homeowner’s job functions on a much smaller scale. At the high school, the head custodian arrives by 5:30 every morning to supervise the delivery of milk, bread, and other foodstuffs for the school lunch program.

“There’s usually two or three 18 wheelers coming through every morning,” said Mr Young. Supplies for the entire district are delivered first to NHS, and sent from there to the middle, intermediate, and elementary schools.

Then Mr Young gets to work. The school’s pool takes up a lot of his time. “I always go down to the pool, ” he said. “I check the pH [levels in the water] every morning, and hose the area down real good. My guy who comes in at night [does the same thing]. He doesn’t have to, but he always checks the pH too. That’s important, I think.”

Then he makes at least one complete round of the school, and draws up work orders. He chuckled when Mr Faiella said, “Teenagers will be teenagers.” Apparently the NHS custodial staff spends a lot of time dealing with minor vandalism.

But most of the work his staff does during the day is routine.

“The bathrooms are checked four or five times a day,” he said. “We do two sweeps through the halls.” And the biggest daytime job is tackling the cafeteria. “With 1,700 students, we [serve] lunch for two hours [every day],” custodian Eric Ventura said. To clean up after everyone, the custodians need all hands on deck. “First and second shift overlap by one hour,” Mr Ventura said, meaning the staff can pitch in to handle the cleanup.

Mr Ventura and Mr Young work the first shift, together with Charlie Kilson. Mr Young and Mr Ventura have a long history with Newtown High School: they both graduated from NHS in 1985. Mr Kilson goes back even further. He has worked in the district for 37 years, which makes him its most experienced custodian.

“Weren’t you here when the building opened [in 1970]?” Mr Ventura asked him. Mr Kilson affirmed that he was. He has seen many staff members come and go through the years. “I get along with everyone,” he said, and it was easy to believe with his laid back tone.

Mr Young explained that the serious scrubbing and dusting gets done during the second and third shifts, well after the school day ends. “There’s just so much that goes on after school,” Mr Young said. When sports and club activities finally wrap up, his crew takes out the scrubbing machines, mops, and dust rags.

“Every desk in every classroom is wiped down every day. Every sink, every bathroom [is cleaned every day].”

Normally, a bathroom can be scrubbed down in about 20 minutes, but if it has been vandalized, it might take closer to an hour. The gym floor also requires some TLC. It is swept and hand mopped every evening, Mr Young explained, but during basketball season, he usually has to bring out the buffing machine.

For Mr Young, “spring cleaning” gets handled in the summer. That is when the pool is drained, power washed, and repainted, and the floors stripped and coated with new wax. “Everything you see here is scrubbed down [then],” he said.

Major painting projects are handled over summer break too, although Mr Young said he does delegate a lot smaller projects out during the school year, especially if graffiti needs to be covered up.

Mr Young is good-natured and relaxed. He, Mr Ventura, and Mr Kilson all share a wonderful rapport with NHS students. “They show me their test grades,” Mr Young said, and they even come to him for help with homework. “I look at it, and I tell them, go back to the teacher and ask her,” he chuckled, “Then let me know.”

There’s only one thing disturbs the calm on Mr Young’s face: snow.

“No matter what,” he said, “we treat every day like [it’s going to be a] school day. We all come in together, it’s all hands on deck.” That means all three shifts come in, sometimes as early as 2 am, to get the sidewalks, courtyards, and outside stairs shoveled, swept, and snow-blown before the buses roll in.

And the first snow of the winter?

“Oh, that’s the worst,” Mr Young grimaced, “the salt and sand [the students] drag in.” He looked dispirited just thinking about it.