Every morning, students at South arrive to a school already cleaned for them, but for many students in Japan, where schools do not have custodians, the students clean the school themselves.
Suzuka Kawano ‘19, a foreign exchange student from Miyazaki Omiya High School,said that most of the schools in Japan do not have custodial staff.
“We have about 10 to 15 minutes to clean school everyday. It could be after lunch or after school, it depends on the school,” Suzuka said. “Everybody in the school is in charge of somewhere in the school to clean.”
This system encourages students to take more pride in their school by taking care of it.
“There are some people who clean the school seriously in the short time and there are also some people who don’t clean seriously,” Suzuka said, “I think it depends on the person.”
Even when students are expected to clean the school on their own, there will always be some students that put in more effort than others.
“I’ve seen people who don’t clean up their own mess many times in here,” Suzuka said, “That’s why I say my school is cleaner than South.”
At South, we have eight custodians. In comparison, when the school was first built along with Leslie Middle School, there were 21 custodians working in the building. Our custodians work a variety of shifts ranging from six in the morning to midnight.
“My responsibilities first are to make sure the buildings are clean and safe for students and staff, and see that it’s a good learning environment,” Salem-Keizer Custodial Manager Paul Raines said.
Custodians do much more than just sweeping the floors or emptying trash. They are also responsible for setting up for activities and events and making sure the boilers are working correctly. They turn on all the lights in the building at the beginning of the day so students do not show up to a dark school.
“You learn how to clean fast, how to get in, get out, move on to the next thing,” Salem Keizer Field Coordinator Brian Weatherly said. The custodians have to cover a total of 349,000 square feet every day. That’s 43,625 square feet for each custodian, given that they are all present.
“Our custodians do a great job of cleaning what they can, and I think our staff and students also do a good job of cleaning up after themselves,” Lara Tiffin, Principal at South, said.
What some people might not realize is that the school is short custodians almost every day.
“In my opinion every school out there is understaffed. The entire department is understaffed… There’s too many students in classrooms, there’s not enough schools. The entire district is bursting,” Weatherly said.
“If a custodian is sick, or taking a vacation day, we typically don’t get a substitute to fill that role, so that’s 8 hours of cleaning that doesn’t get done,” Tiffin said. Raines described the system for substitution as a “Round Robin with staffing”.
“With more custodial staff we would be able to clean the building more thoroughly than we are able to at this time. We would be able to respond to staff requests faster,” South’s lead custodian Tim Gregory said.
However, the school has quality equipment that can make work more manageable for our custodians, according to Raines.
“With changes that we’ve made in equipment we’re in a much better position than we were,” Raines said.
Raines said the biggest challenge of cleaning the school is extracurricular activities and a limited budget.
Another challenge the custodians face is student allergies.
“A lot of students have allergies, types of fragrance, types of soap,” Collins said. This means the custodians have to be extremely careful about what chemicals they use to clean. Sometimes, they just use water to wipe down surfaces rather than using chemicals that could potentially harm students with allergies.
Part of the Field Coordinators’ job is to train new custodians.
“I’ve been training my guys to do whatever they can to make sure the school has no distractions for students to learn, which involves keeping it clean. Our biggest thing is doing our job so teachers can do their jobs,” Field Coordinator Marc Collins said. The district has mandatory trainings as well, so custodians can stay up to date on the new equipment and methods they should use.
“In my opinion, [students] should take more pride in their school…Their job is not to clean the school, their job is to keep their area clean….If they do that, our job becomes easier,” Collins said.
“As far as deeper cleaning, I’m not really sure that that should be a student responsibility,” Tiffin said.
“[Students can help by] just doing their part, just picking up and being conscious to what’s around them,” Raines said
Michelle Howard, Behavioral Specialist at South, takes it upon herself to pick up trash in the halls with a plastic grabber she got from the Life Skills class.
“I’m on lunch supervision and I’m out in the halls anyway, and I’m one of those people who believes in contagious littering, and what that means is if someone drops a wrapper on the floor and you’re walking along and you see a wrapper on the floor, you’re probably more likely, if you have something to throw on the floor, to throw it on the floor. So I figure if I keep it nice and tidy and clean people don’t want to be the one littering, so it just seems to be kind of a preventative, proactive measure,” Howard said, “But the other piece is I’m kind of hyperactive and as I go around and do stuff, I feel like I should be productive with my time.”
Howard wants to show that no one is above cleaning up trash around the school, and everyone can help in some way.
“It also gives me chances to interact with kids. Sometimes I, you know, bump them on the shoe,” Howard said.
Howard likes to befriend as many students as possible and set a good example for them. She is frustrated to see trash left out after lunch.
“We don’t leave that for the custodians. They have other, really important things to do that don’t get done, because they’ve got to clean up a smashed apple in one of the hallways from someone who just didn’t want to do anything productive for the good of the order,” she said. “I just wish that people would take that a little more seriously.”
She also addressed people incorrectly throwing away cans and bottles.
“Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of cans and bottles in the garbage, and that’s ten cents, that’s a resource,” she said, “That ten cents is going to go to one of our programs, it will help kids, so I just like to set the good example and I hope that people will start thinking differently if they see that I’m not above cleaning garbage and helping to make things better.”
Howard mentioned people leaving trash like milk cartons around the neighborhood. She said she picks them up whenever she sees them.
“It looks badly upon us that we’re not being better neighbors,” she said. “I don’t want people to think that we’re not doing our part.”
Howard thinks students can get a bad rap for their age, but they can always be proactive and be an example to their peers. If one person acts as an example, others will follow.
“This is our house and we want to keep a tidy house,” Howard said. Students should do their best to respect our learning space and make it a clean and safe environment for one another.
As John Heywood once said, “Many hands make light work.” If everyone does a little work, no one has to do a lot.
“As a student of South Salem High School, what is your commitment to keeping the school clean, and what are your peers’ commitment to keeping the school clean? Are they the same as yours?” Weatherly asked.
Our custodians work hard to keep our school a safe and clean place for us to learn, but students have a responsibility to the school as well. The Saxon family can make this school a better place.
