Working at Timber Creek High School with its vast array of students leads to an early morning and even longer evening. Staff and teachers work endless hours to make sure Timber Creek runs smoothly day in and day out. For the custodial staff it’s extremely difficult to keep the school clean. Students not only disregard the staff, but they disrespect them as well.
Custodians work for eight hours in shifts starting from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. daily. Out of the custodians’ eight-hour day, they only clean for seven of them. The remaining hour is spent eating lunch for 30 minutes and taking out the trash for the remaining 30 minutes. In order for them to not get behind, the maximum amount of time spent cleaning in each room is about seven minutes.
“It’s hard when the kids get released at 3:45 p.m. and some teachers and students have to stay after, it tends to put us behind,” said Esmeralda Jimenez, head custodian at Timber Creek High School.
There are 17 employees who are assigned 22 classrooms each in addition to restrooms which they are required to cover in their shift. They disinfect everything from classrooms to locker rooms every day. When students throw trash on the floor, write on desks and restroom walls and don’t stack chairs, it makes the custodians job so much harder than it already is.
“School can’t be what gets the students dirty,” said Jimenez. “It’s hard to be a head custodian and it’s hard to keep the school clean with a lot of students. This year there are a lot of extra students then there was before. There’s a lot of rooms to clean in a short amount of time.”
If the TCHS community strived to be considerate of the faculty that work at the school, the workload of the custodians would be impacted greatly. Methods like cleaning up the desk area, throwing away trash and stacking the chairs at the end of the day would be a courteous act. The custodians deserve respect because they are dedicated to keeping the students healthy and their workplace clean.
