A common misconception about the custodial staff on campus is that they only clean up after student’s trash during nutrition and lunch. However, their hard work is more than just that.
Danny Lopez, Rachel Underwood, Rolando Bellorini, Estrella Jimenez, James Tan, Jonathan Huynh, Albert Anaya, John Recendez, Manny Valdivia, and Juliana Rodriguez are the campus’ ten custodians. Often overlooked for the amount of work they do, they help uphold school safety standards by cleaning, providing teacher’s special requests regarding facilities, and overseeing repairs.
There are two custodian crews, one for the morning and another for the night shift. The morning crew arrives before everyone on campus, leaving their homes to arrive at their shifts from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The night crew then stays after everyone leaves from the school day, working from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Lead day custodian Danny Lopez describes his day-to-day life on campus. Before the school day, custodians disarm the campus’ alarms, blow away trash and leaves into a pile to dispose of them, then unlock the restrooms and make sure they’re stocked and clean for the day. They then break into groups to task on various sections of the campus such as preparing the stadium, parking lot and gym for when students arrive.
(Violet Vazquez-Rios)
After nutrition and lunch they clean up, and will then continue with work orders until the end of the day. The same will be repeated throughout the week.
“When you guys are in class like for the first and second period, we’re taking care of work orders, fixing things, repairing things, moving things,” said Lopez.
Day custodian Jonathan Huynh shared that West Covina’s campus is the largest school he’s worked at in this district. So although he enjoys keeping busy, the upkeep is at an all-time high and highly labor intensive.
“I wish would know the hard work we put into this campus. Most of the time, you know out of all the kids in this school whatever the number of enrollment is, sometimes they don’t realize what we do. And it only takes like one or two kids to realize, to come up to me and say thank you for your hard work. And I don’t get that often, but I really appreciate that,” said Hunyh.
Custodians also help set up for large events hosted on campus. For example, the college on-the-spot admission events that took place in the quad for University of La Verne and Arizona Pacific University on Jan. 17-18.
Custodians from the night crew were pulled from their routes so they could set up for the on-the-spot admissions event. Then the day crew custodians had to make sure to disassemble and clean up from the event on Jan. 17 to prepare for a boy’s basketball game the same day at 6:30 p.m. The custodians play a huge role in campus celebrations even though they’re not students.
Assistant Principal Melanie Wong emphasized that students can do their role in keeping the campus clean and helping out custodians by cleaning up after themselves.
“I wish students knew how much is on the plate of each custodian. That what they see at lunch or nutrition with the custodians cleaning up is probably like 5-10% of their entire role on this campus,” said Wong.
A simple “thank you” can make custodian’s feel appreciated and motivated. Through custodian’s work, no matter how large the issue or mess, the campus is always ready for students and staff.
