Respect is one of the six character pillars that’s been woven into our moral compasses since elementary school. Most of our families have reinforced this: you treat others how you would like to be treated and remain mindful of how your actions affect those around you. Thus, it seems like a given that we would not knowingly create extra challenges for our custodians, who are already overworked. Unfortunately, however, some students do just that.

This year, our custodial staff is working at a reduced capacity. Though the staffing shortage is not the fault of our student body, our student body does have the power to make things easier for those who are here to support us. Some of these things should go without saying, starting with the fact that we, as students, need to start picking up after ourselves. While the Westview trash epidemic has certainly gotten better since the universal free lunch program ended, it is still rare to walk a few yards through the quad after lunch without finding a discarded wrapper or a dirty paper plate. And although you may feel that it’s not your job to pick up garbage around campus, it goes a long way. This is a very elementary lesson, but it is no less important that we remind ourselves of it: many hands make light work. What may be a minor inconvenience for a student to pick up snowballs into a time-consuming nightmare for our custodians, that they will need to attend to when they could otherwise be focusing on other areas of our campus that need more attention, such as the restrooms. 

And then, let’s take better care of our restrooms. Though burst pipes and missing locks are out of our control, if we refrain from furthering the existing damage, it can be addressed by our staff more readily. Right now, fixing the restrooms is like playing a game of whack-a-mole: when one thing gets fixed, another gets broken (a soap dispenser is torn off of a wall, the toilet gets clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper, etc).

Our custodial staff is currently responsible for 150% the amount of work that they signed up for—which is already more than we as students are likely aware of—and to add insult to injury, the entire district shares 14 substitutes, when there may be as many as 30 custodians missing from all of the PUSD schools on any given day. 

As far as responsibilities are concerned, according to the PUSD custodial hiring website, custodians are not only responsible for cleaning rooms and maintaining facilities, but also securing all buildings, waxing floors, maintaining outdoor facilities, communicating with district personnel, setting up for special events, and ensuring that all classroom equipment is safe for students and staff. Visit the link included to learn more about what the job entails, including details about hiring.

The truth of the matter is that the staffing shortage is a nationwide problem that won’t be solved overnight, and there is not much that we can do about it. But what we can do is make life easier for the people who work so hard behind the scenes so that we can enjoy school and remain focused on our studies. 

The Nexus would like to thank our custodians: Steven Kraemer, Fe Lapitan, Abe Lauricio, Tyler Crews, Diosdado Layugan, Michael Nuguid, annd Renato Villanueva, for all that they do for our school. Your work does not go unnoticed.