The Roles Custodians Play in Our Lives

THE ROLES CUSTODIANS PLAY

BY COLTON HARBOLT

More than a custodian. The custodial staff help make the school a better place by going above and beyond each day with the work they do.

Daytime custodians Christa Harley and Janet Robinson and the night time custodians Lynda Rhodes and Taylor Thompson work hard each day and night to keep the school clean and safe. The custodians worked many jobs before they ended up here, but they always have had a love for cleaning even before they were custodians. When they found their way here, they started working as daytime janitors and had to deal with the daily messes left by high school students throughout each school day.

Before she started working as a custodian, Harley’s previous jobs had been diverse but she would always take the opportunity to clean. She worked as a waitress, she has done work for a special needs facility and worked for Amazon. At all of these jobs she has had to do cleaning and had worked in a similar way she does now as a custodian. She had actually gained experience as a custodian before she came here due to the work she did in Spencer County as a custodian and a bus driver. “I’ve done cleaning all my life, every job I’ve ever had to do cleaning,” Harley said. Though cleaning may seem like a chore to some people, to our custodians they are just doing what they like to do.

“I wanted to make a difference in the school,” Robinson said. Harley and Robinson work as daytime janitors, meaning throughout the school day they are picking up after students, cleaning the cafeterias and any messes that need their attention. “Our job is like safety, we have to make sure that there’s no wet spots on the floor or anything you could slip on,” Harley said. They need to make sure that any spills, or messes in the halls that could be a possible hazard to students are taken care of. While the custodian’s job mostly includes cleaning, they also make sure students in the halls are behaving and going where they are supposed to. With the current vaping and drug problems the school has faced, they play a part in trying to end it by keeping an eye on students that may be misbehaving and keeping them in check. These custodians care for students and want to make sure their time at the school is the best it could be so that they could have a successful life after highschool.

Harley and Robinson are used to the day to day messes students leave behind, but the “devious lick” trend that students have participated in lately has added a whole new set of issues. For this trend, students would steal or move school property (usually soap dispensers) to unusual spots or just make a mess in the bathrooms. This has put a lot more on the custodian’s plates than they have had to deal with in the past. “We don’t know how to stop it, no one wants to go in a bathroom and guard,” Robinson said. This problem has escalated to the point where the custodians have stopped replacing the soap dispensers in hopes that after a while, students would stop this behavior and they could place soap in the bathrooms without it being tampered with.

“We’re understaffed and there’s a lot that’s put on us,” Robinson said. When Harley and Robinson’s shift ends and they go home, Rhoads and Thompson pick up the work. The whole school has to be cleaned before the next day and there’s only four custodians to do it. “When they can’t do anything we do it at night so

Taylor Thompson (left) and Lynda Rhoads (right) are the nightime Custodians at our school and work hard to keep our school clean, especially after large events such as Halloween in the halls. In their everyday lives they are faced with daily messes left by the student at our school. “It is what it is,” Thompson said.

Above: (left to right) Janet Robinson, Christa Harley, Lynda Rhoads , Taylor Thompson.

it makes it easy on them,” Thompson said. Between the four custodians not only do they work for the students and teachers but they work for each other as well. While cleaning the school, the custodial staff works as a team, tackling the labor of cleaning the school together, making sure they do their part, so when their shift ends and the other custodians come to continue the work, they don’t have as much of a mess to deal with.

Rhoads and Thompson also help make sure the school is clean and sanitized due to COVID-19 protocols still in place, which adds on to the already hard work the custodians do. They have to go throughout the school and make sure all surfaces that may have been in contact with someone who has contracted the virus is sanitized for the next school day. This reduces the risk of students and teachers contracting COVID-19 and helps keep everyone safe while at school.

“We love the kids,” Harley said. As the custodians are doing their job around the school, they have gotten the opportunity to talk and interact with students and get to know them. Throughout the day they would stop and have conversations about how their day is going, or just what’s happening around the school. Harley and Robinson have been able to form relationships with students and it helps create a better environment for students to feel comfortable and safe while they are at school and both plan on staying at the school until they retire.

The job of being a custodian is more to them than just cleaning up the school; they feel that they have the duty to help make the school the best it could be in any way they can. Harley, Robinson, Rhoads and Thompson have created a safe, clean, comfortable and fun environment for students and they play a huge role in the lives of every student in the school. The school would not be the same without them.

Below: Christa Harley (left) and Janet Robinson (right) are the daytime custodians for our school, who have tackled the messes made throughout the school day since the have worked at the school. “I like to be around all the kids,” Harley said.