Schools Nationwide Struggle to Fill Custodial Positions

In what was supposed to be a recovery year, schools across the country find themselves in survival mode instead as they struggle to hire enough staff including custodians, teachers, and bus drivers, the Washington Post reports.

School board members and parents in Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools in Vermont are cleaning classrooms to help the short-staffed custodial crew which lost one-third of its workers. In Nevada schools, principals are taking over teaching duties, vacuuming hallways, and cleaning restrooms. In Massachusetts, National Guard troops are driving school buses.

Although school systems are getting billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief funding, the extra money has not fixed the hiring problem. Many schools are also using the money for facility ventilation upgrades that help combat spread of the coronavirus, technology improvements, tutoring, summer school, virtual academies, and mental health services. Although schools are using some of the funding for hiring and bonuses, many are reluctant to raise salaries to a point they can no longer afford after the federal money is gone.

Some school districts have gotten creative in finding alternative staff. A high school in the Northwest School District, just outside St. Louis, hosted a job fair for its students advertising maintenance, child-care, and cafeteria jobs at the school. The school district adjusted students’ academic schedules to allow them to work and is paying them US$10 to $13 an hour in positions that won’t keep them working late at night.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, city officials are allowing city employees to take four hours of paid leave a month to pitch in at schools. The school superintendent in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, has replaced part-time custodial and food-service positions with full-time jobs that offer benefits, giving workers incentive to stay.