THE ISSUE
As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Ashley Stalnecker reported in last Sunday’s edition, “A few Lancaster County school districts have found a new way around continuing staffing shortages, and it involves hiring students. Penn Manor School District recently joined at least two other school districts — Donegal and Warwick — in hiring student custodians to assist their full-time janitorial staff after school.”
At first glance, the notion seemed like something out of a Victorian novel: putting students to work cleaning their own schools.
We briefly wondered what might come next. Hiring students as school bus drivers? School districts have scrambled to find them during this pandemic, too.
But those of us who cleaned pots and pans in our college dining halls know that a job is a job. And custodial work is important.
Schools couldn’t safely open if custodians weren’t scrubbing the lavatories, cleaning the cafeterias and wiping away the allergens and dust that could make learning difficult for some. While the risk of COVID-19 infection through contact with contaminated surfaces is relatively low — the primary mode of transmission is via exposure to respiratory droplets — cleaning and disinfecting high-touch surfaces in schools remains necessary to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and other infectious diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So a shortage of custodians is serious business.
We believe it would be preferable if school districts could offer full-time custodial pay that would draw more adult applicants to do this essential work.
And we have some concerns about how school districts are protecting the privacy of students, as fellow students move around unoccupied classrooms and offices to clean them. We trust that educational records and other documents are securely stored, in accordance with federal student privacy law.
But we also understand why local school districts are seeking to fill openings on their custodial staffs with willing students. They need the help.
As Stalnecker reported, “More than a dozen students clocked in for their first day cleaning up Penn Manor High School at 3 p.m. Jan. 24.”
The students “are assigned to a full-time custodian in groups of three or four for a three-hour shift,” she noted. “They come every day that they’re not involved in another after-school activity.”
At Penn Manor, the youngest employee is 14, the minimum age for most paid employment in Pennsylvania (a 12-year-old can be employed as a caddie, as long as he or she doesn’t carry more than one golf bag at a time). According to Pennsylvania’s Child Labor Act, minors ages 14 and 15 may not be employed for more than three hours on a school day. So the three-hour shifts fit the bill.
Like the full-time custodians, the students clean classrooms, hallways, restrooms and stairwells. They are not permitted, however, to operate equipment like the high school’s floor-scrubbing machine. Given the size and costs of those machines — and the safety implications — this seems wise.
“We are very pleased,” Chris Johnston, business manager for Penn Manor School District, told Stalnecker. “We’ve had comments from our teaching staff that have noticed a difference in their classrooms being clean.”
Chip Mathias, Penn Manor’s director of buildings and grounds, said he’s already gotten feedback from student custodians who say they have “a better appreciation for what’s been done in the schools that they weren’t aware of.”
This doesn’t surprise us. It’s easy to take for granted a clean school — or a clean home — when you’re not the one cleaning it.
Learning how to clean properly is part of becoming self-sufficient. Which is why schools in Japan traditionally have required students to clean their classrooms. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, chores can help children to develop self-esteem, responsibility and the ability to handle frustration and adversity. And even kindergartners can make their beds and help clear the family table after dinner, and elementary school-age kids “can wipe tables and counters, put laundry away, and sweep floors,” the academy’s website notes.
We’re not recommending that schools hire children that young as janitors — the point is that cleaning is a necessary life skill, and learning the ins and outs of professional cleaning will help teenagers no matter what work they do as adults. And if they decide to seek custodial jobs after graduation, they’ll have experience.
According to Stalnecker’s reporting, the student custodians at Penn Manor earn $12.99 per hour — the same starting rate as their adult colleagues. Students are paid with the money already budgeted for the high school’s usual full-time custodial staff of nine; that number has dropped to only four.
That wage is $1.99 per hour more than the substitute building services rate that student cleaners in the Warwick School District will earn (though $11 is better than the state and federal minimum wage). Warwick, which has “had a summer student building services team for decades, is now accepting applications to hire students during the school year for the first time,” Stalnecker reported.
“Our team has been looking for new ways to navigate staff shortages and are always seeking to provide new opportunities to students,” Noelle Brossman, Warwick’s director of human resources, said in an email to LNP | LancasterOnline. “This seemed like the perfect way to do both.”
It is indeed a creative solution. It’s meeting a need. It’s a convenient work option for teens who don’t drive or have access to a car. It may keep some students out of trouble.
We hope the student custodians, like their adult counterparts, are respected by other students. They’re earning it. They deserve it.
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Originally Appeared Here