Yonkers School District Unit members Christopher Gonzalez,
left, and Rosario Cioffi strip floors at Saunders Trades and
Technical High School.
YONKERS — While students and teachers enjoy time away from the classroom during the summer months, many CSEA members working in the Yonkers Public Schools do the exact opposite.
Custodial workers in this district, the state’s fourth largest with around 27,000 students, have their busiest months of the year in July and August. It is their efforts that allow students to return in September to schools that are safe, sanitary and ready for learning.
“We have two months to catch up from 10 months of school,” said CSEA member Tom Makar, a 27-year district worker who serves as head custodian at Saunders Trades and Technical High School. “We clean everything.
From the ceilings on down, everything gets wiped down, and we strip and then wax all of the floors.”
At Saunders, custodial workers had the added challenge this summer of working around contractors brought in to rebuild a portion of the school after fire damaged a building entrance and main office. On a late August afternoon, Makar’s crew was busy applying stripping solutions and scrubbing classroom floors while contractors were in and out of the building doing construction.
Bryant
Over at Charles E. Gorton High School, workers were busy with similar tasks. Darryl Bryant, a 27-year custodian, said summertime is when he and his co-workers also make needed repairs.
“We do all kinds of maintenance in the summer,” said Bryant. “You might be replacing floor tiles, patching walls, replacing doors and fixing windows.”
Bryant’s co-worker Robert Watkins noted workers’ responsibilities for outdoor buildings and grounds work. Workers also handle mowing, weed whacking and athletic fields.
Turner
CSEA Unit President Lionel Turner, a Gorton alumnus who later worked there as head custodian, said the work his members do throughout the summer is key to keeping buildings in good shape and curtails the need for outside workers to come in.
“They do all of this despite the fact that we’ve lost many positions to attrition and have far fewer workers than we did in the past,” Turner said. “Before, we had a grounds crew that took care of that work. Now the custodians are handling everything. Even with that challenge, they keep things running.”
— Jessica Ladlee
Yonkers School
District Unit
member Lee
Campbell, a
custodial worker
at Saunders
Trades and
Technical High
School, strips
a classroom
floor as part
of the summer
refurbishments
at the school.
