• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts

The Educators Room logo

  • Start Here
    • Impact Statements: Teacher Expertise
    • Newsletter
  • Browse Topics
    • Content Strategies
      • Literacy
      • Mathematics
      • Social Studies
      • Educational Technology
      • ELL & ESOL
      • Fine Arts
      • Special Education
      • Popular Topics
        • Teacher Self-Care
        • Instructional Coach Files
        • Common Core
        • The Traveling Teacher
        • The Unemployed Teacher
        • The New Teacher Chronicles
        • Book Review
        • Grade Levels
          • Elementary (K-5)
          • Middle (6-8)
          • Adult
          • New Teacher Bootcamp
          • Hot Button Topics
            • Menu Item
              • Principals' Corner
              • Charter Schools
              • Confessions of a Teacher
              • Interviews
              • The State of Education
              • Stellar Educator of the Week
            • Menu
              • How to Fix Education
              • Featured
              • Ask a Teacher
              • Teacher Branding
              • Current Events
  • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout- An 8 Week Course
    • Becoming An Educational Consultant
    • Teacher Branding 101:Teachers are The Experts
    • The Learning Academy
    • Books
    • Shirts
  • Education in Atlanta
  • Teacher Self-Care
  • The Coach's Academy
menu icon
go to homepage
subscribe
search icon
Homepage link
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts
×

September 25, 2014 Current Events in Education

Custodial Care: Respecting the Essential Education Support Services

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Lee-Ann Meredith

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tzu Lee-Ann Meredith is a second grade teacher, author, Department Chairperson and education advocate who has spent the duration of her time in public education at John B. Murphy Elementary School in inner city Chicago. Often characterized as funny, dynamic, and an independent innovator, Lee-Ann cites her idol as Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus. Fluent in a wide range in instructional strategies for the elementary level, Lee-Ann is dedicated to being an advocate for children everywhere by implementing 'cutting edge' strategies to increase student achievement. Some of the issues that she spearhead included: promoting literacy throughout the building, leading community meetings to advocate for full day kindergarten for all students and helping implement the Responsive Classroom strategies throughout the school. In addition to working closely with the curriculum, she also had the honor to supervise (and mentor into teaching positions) numerous student teachers and practicum students from various post-secondary institutions around the Chicago area such as: Erikson Institute, National Louis, DePaul. Northeaster Illinois, Roosevelt, and North Park Universities.
  • Social Emotional Learning: Can It Help Our Most Vulnerable Students? - August 27, 2017
  • Why We Should Teach Meditation in the Classroom - November 8, 2016
  • Strike! - October 5, 2016
  • Teaching a Superpower - September 22, 2016
  • Essentially, I am a Teacher - August 30, 2016
  • A Chicago Teacher's Dream - January 22, 2016
  • A Career in Crisis - August 27, 2015
  • Classroom Community and Rock-Paper-Scisssors - July 22, 2015
  • The Art of Teaching - June 22, 2015
  • Parent tip: Beyond Sounding It Out - June 4, 2015

custodian toolsWho are the custodians at your school? Do you know them by name? Do you know their strengths and weaknesses? Are you reliant upon them?

The crazy mess with custodial services in Chicago has made national news. Last year the Chicago Board of Education contracted custodial services with Aramark and Sudexo. Sudexo is primarily working at charter schools. Aramark is servicing the remainder of the schools.

The complaints of dirty schools have been rampant. Over forty percent of the Chicago Public School principals replied to a survey sent out by AAPLE, a principal activist group under the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. Principals are complaining that there have been dead insects and rat droppings in the schools. They haven’t been able to visit classrooms because they are dealing with cleaning issues. Principal are paying people out of their own pockets to move furniture. A Chicago Teacher Union survey reports that classrooms are only being cleaned twice a week. Rugs are left unvacuumed and trash cans aren’t emptied daily. There have been reports of bedbugs in the schools. The schools even smell bad, many say.

In the past, custodians were assigned to a single school. Now, they float between schools. This means they do not develop relationships with the staff, administration, or students. Most of the custodians work during the night. Positions have been cut. Principals have no authorization over them. Almost 20% of the custodians will be losing their jobs.

I think of the custodians that were in and out of my classroom. We recognized one custodian’s voice as he sang in a rich baritone as he set up in the morning. I remember one young man from Brazil, who spoke neither English nor Spanish. He smiled as he struggled to learn the language. After I apologized for a particularly messy room, one day, he laughed, “It's okay, Ms. Mer-ree-da, my job is to fix the mess.” Jorge, who was always there in the morning, cleaned more vomit in a month than most of us see in a lifetime. (Who cleans that up if the custodians are only there at night?)

Later when Jorge was diagnosed with colon cancer, the school rallied around him and his family. By making workers transient we take their chance of community away, also.

At my school we had no lunch room. This meant we ate in our classrooms. Daily floor mopping was essential. Vacuuming the rugs in primary rooms is also imperative. I did at least half my teaching with the class sitting on the rug. If you think you can keep a rug cleaner than that, try giving one ADHD child a tissue and see what happens. The rug is covered by teeny-tiny scraps of tissue in less than three minutes. (I can’t even guarantee the tissue was clean to begin with.)

I always required my class treat the custodians with respect. They worked hard to make a school the beautiful clean place it was. They mowed the lawns, moved furniture, cleaned up blood, and took pride in a job well done. They were connected to their school.

Perhaps Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (the Chicago Board of Education is appointed by him, and he is a famed micro-manager) forgot that schools are filled with children, not adults who work in an office. Generally, adults are fairly tidy. They have trash cans next to each desk. They don’t littler in the hallway. Or drag their pencil along the wall as they walk. The males at work don’t empty their milk cartons by squeezing the remaining liquid through the straw in the general direction of the bucket, pretending they are using a urinal. Most adults don’t sneeze, cough, or puke on every surface possible. They usually keep their hands out of their noses and mouths. They never sit on the floor. They don’t share 4 bathroom stalls with 150 other people. They don’t stick little pieces of paper or gum in the drinking fountain drain.

There seems to be a disconnect regarding the point of custodians in a school. Just as teachers are public servants, so are school custodians. They are there to make the best learning environment possible. It should be clean and welcoming place. It should be a community where people want to be. And those who make that possible should be respected, paid good wages, and they should not have to do the work of 3 or 4 people.

Oh, did I mention that Aramark has also obtained the food service contract for the Chicago Public Schools, too?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailWhat Bothers Me About Public Schools In Defense of Standardized Testing: A Reflection Equity in Action: Mitigating Unconscious Bias In the Classroom [Opinion] Barack Obama: A Role Model for Teachers and Students
« Extending A Helping Hand: Mentor
An Organizational Structure That Works in Urban Schools »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

The Educator's Room was launched in 2012 to amplify the voice of educators. To date, we have over 45+ writers from around the world and boast over twelve million page views. Through articles, events, and social media we will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about how to improve public education. This mission is especially important when reporting on education in our community; therefore, we commit our readers to integrity, accuracy, and independence in education reporting. To join our mailing list, click here.

What we do

At The Educator's Room, we focus on amplifying and honoring the voice of educators as experts in education. To date, we have over 40 staff writers/teachers from around the world.

Popular Posts

  • Ask The Educator's Room: I'm dating a student's dad. Should we tell the school?
  • My Union Showed Up for Me, and I'll Never Forget It
  • Your Students Deserve a Diverse Classroom Library. Here's How to Set It Up.
  • You Don't Have to Watch the Tyre Nichols Video, But Be Ready to Talk About It

Featured On

Buy Our Books/Courses

How to Leave Your Job in Education

Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout

Using Your Teacher Expertise to Become an Educational Consultant

Check out our books on teaching and learning!

The Learning Academy

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility Policy

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Services
  • Media Kit
  • FAQ

 

Copyright © 2021 The Educator's Room.