Valders High School custodian Cynthia Wallander works with students, teaching them skills needed to work outside the home and school. Here she works with Bob Hieber (left) and Henry Baer.

By Amanda N. Wegner
Contributing writer

We all have memories of someone like this ... She seemed to be everywhere all the time: the library, the gym, the school yard. He’d walk a student to the office to patch up a skinned knee. She’d dig through lunchtime garbage bags to find a retainer that was accidentally thrown away. On bitter winter afternoons, he’d keep an eye out for late parents so the young students wouldn’t have to brave the cold. This reliable, quiet man or woman wasn’t a teacher, principal or counselor. He or she was the school custodian.

School custodians do more than mop floors and take out garbage, and the following quote from the Madison Metropolitan School District sums it up: “Although not often thought of as a key ingredient of a successful educational environment, the school custodian plays an essential role in maintaining the building, but also the health, attitude and pride of students.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give us an 8, maybe 9,” Gayle Buol, a custodian in Monroe said when asked how important custodians are to the functioning of a school.

“Teachers and education are the most important, but when you think about the issues we take care of, like safety and health, and just the extra support we give to students, yeah, we are important.”

Coming to school

Buol has been a custodian in the Monroe schools for seven years and is currently working at the elementary school. When her four children were younger, Buol wanted to be near her children and have the same vacation schedule, so she took a job as a playground supervisor. But when the district started to reduce the number of aides it employed, she figured budget woes were on the horizon. Thinking a job as a custodian was more stable as the schools were expanded, she made the switch.

“They were hiring full-time custodians, and I thought it would be more secure,” Buol said. “That’s how I got here today.”

When her children were in school, she worked the early morning shift to “keep an eye on my teenagers,” Buol said. Now that they are grown, she works a later shift.

“I was lucky that I got to have that time with my kids,” Buol said.

Family-friendly job

Like Buol, Cynthia Wallander was looking for a job that was more family-friendly than the one she previously held at a bakery. She found it in the custodial department of the Valders Area School District.

“When the job opportunity came up, I bounced at it. My schedule (at the bakery) was goofy, and when you have a family, that’s hard. I wanted Monday through Friday,” said Wallander, who has worked at Valders middle and high schools for 12 years.

Dennis Defferding

Many custodians come to work in the schools after establishing themselves in a different field or career. Dennis Defferding, a school custodian at Shiocton High School, spent 14 years as a truck driver before coming into his current job, one he has had for the last 11 years.

“There was just no stability in truck driving,” Defferding said. “The benefits were a key factor, not the wages. And it’s a good job.”

Daniel Esser, who does custodial and maintenance/grounds work, worked in retail before starting with the Belleville School District five years ago. He was looking for a career change, one where there was less over-the-shoulder micromanagement. Though he still has people looking after him, the situation, he says, is improved – and much better than working retail.

More than a helping hand

Each day is different, Defferding said, but whether he’s rolling out wrestling mats or setting up tables for a career day, the goal is always the same: to provide a safe, clean environment for students and the community.

“This is a community building,” Defferding said. “It’s for the good of everybody.”

In the Valders school district, Wallander is part of a unique program helping students.

In the afternoons, Wallander works with four special needs students, teaching them skills needed to work outside the home and school.
“They work with me to gain basic job skills, like how to follow directions. They don’t need complete supervision. And I love it. I love knowing that I’m helping them help themselves,” Wallander said.

After working with Wallander, some students go on to work jobs in the community a few hours a day.

“I’m glad to be part of their lives,” Wallander said.

Wallander is also the co-leader of an abstinence group. With her children out of school, working with students is a way to fill that void.

“I just love working with kids. I do get close to a lot of them and I know I’m doing my job when they come up to me in the store and say ‘Hi, Mrs. Wallander.’ At times I feel I’m a mother for them away from home.”

Establishing relationships with students and teachers also helps gain respect, which leads to fewer incidences of property damage and vandalism, Defferding said.

A tough job

Budget woes are what lured Buol to her job as a custodian, but she hasn’t avoided them completely. This year is a financially dire one for Monroe schools; in December, the school board voted to cut $1.3 million and 50 jobs.

When Buol was interviewed in late December, a part-time custodian had recently left and there were, to her knowledge, no plans to fill the position. With one less custodian on staff, Buol had to forgo cleaning her designated classrooms – including pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms – every third day to clean up the areas previously covered by the part-time custodian.

“Every third day some of my areas get left, which concerns me,” Buol said. “About 50 to 60 kids a day are out sick with flu or colds. With my areas being left, nobody’s disinfecting the tabletops. The teachers say ‘we’ll survive,’ but two or three days later, you see the results with sniffling noses and scratchy throats.”

A referendum is scheduled in Monroe for April.

Defferding, whose district passed a referendum last September, is confident in the security of his job, but did not hesitate to speculate on the future.

“A lot of schools are in trouble,” he said. “Our referendum this (past) fall brought some stability for the next four years, but things can always change after that.”

While Shiocton and Monroe are seeing declining enrollments, which translates to less state funding, Belleville’s Esser is experiencing another kind of “growing” pain.

“We are a growing district,” Esser said. “We’ve got 400 new homes. It seems like the duties and responsibilities are growing, but we already have full schedules. Without more people like myself, teachers aren’t always able to perform their duties in a timely fashion. They often have to wait longer to get things accomplished, because we can’t be in two or three or four places at once.”

In some districts, budget woes have led to the outsourcing of custodial and maintenance duties. While none of the schools represented by these custodians have gone that route, Buol said privatization does not benefit schools or the students they serve.

“I hear a lot of districts have not been happy with the results, because you don’t know who’s coming in. There’s often a low quality of work and an increase in thefts,” Buol said. “The other thing is that they don’t have a personal tie to the school or its community. I have an interest in this building. I take pride in my work.”

Above the call of duty

In many schools, custodians are not only responsible for the safety of a building as it relates to the physical environment. Custodians often work “security detail,” providing assistance at after-school events, keeping an eye out for suspicious activity on the school grounds, and looking out for the safety of students and staff.

“I’m here for their safety and well-being, too,” Buol said. “For instance, I look around the playground to make sure no one is locked outside.”

A prime example of a school custodian serving as a “master at arms” is Dave Thompson, the Weston custodian honored by WEAC for wrestling a shotgun away from student Eric Hainstock last September, potentially saving the lives of other students and staff.

Like many among a school’s rank and file support staff, custodians play a vital role not only in the health and safety of the school, but also its general well-being.

“I’m an important part of their day,” Buol said. “I think I am another outlet for kids to talk to. A lot of schools are getting rid of guidance counselors and other folks trained to listen, but these students really need someone who can listen to them. I feel I’m very important to them in that respect. Teachers are so overwhelmed today. Yes, they are involved, but they have so many kids in the classroom, they just don’t have time to listen to those sorts of things.

“Not only custodians, but secretaries and aides, other support staff, all play an important part in a kid’s education. It’s very sad when you have budget cuts, because it’s the support staff that’s eliminated, and down the road I think you’ll see ramifications of that.”

Posted January 26, 2007