Parent, retired teacher passionately object to school district’s plan

A parent and a retired teacher passionately objected during last week’s Muscogee County School Board meeting as they spoke against the Muscogee County School District’s plan to radically change who cleans the schools.

The proposal, which the Ledger-Enquirer reported after MCSD operations chief David Goldberg presented it to the board in February, is designed to increase effectiveness and possibly decrease expenses. If the board approves superintendent David Lewis’ recommendation during its April 17 meeting, the district would:

▪ Move its employees working as custodians at the 32 elementary schools to the 12 middle schools and nine high schools.

▪ Reduce the number of contractors providing outsourced custodians from four janitorial service companies to one. The total annual cost of those four contracts is approximately $2 million.

▪ Use those contracted custodians at all the elementary schools.

Goldberg emphasized in February, “None of our (150) custodians, none of our employees, who we value greatly and do a super job, are in danger of losing their job. This is to help them.”

The problem the administration is trying to solve, Goldberg explained then, is the logistical trouble and communication breakdowns causing poor service and responsibility arguments amid the tangle of dealing with four companies as well as MCSD’s own employees. This is especially challenging at schools served by a mix of employed and contracted custodians, Goldberg said.

“We have some pockets of excellence in some of our elementary schools,” he said then. “Those are going to be the tough ones to break up. But we also have some pockets that aren’t working very well.”

For a combined 58 years, Cleo Smith and Joe Brown, the two custodians at Mathews Elementary School, have produced one of those “pockets of excellence,” according to PTA treasurer Alecia Cravey and retired teacher Kathy Gierer, who addressed the board during the public agenda portion of the March 27 meeting.

“We have received nearly 750 signatures from individuals having either attended or been a part of the Mathews family through an online petition,” Cravey said. “The overwhelming theme is that these two have impacted so many young people in such a positive way.”

They encourage students with kind words, jokes and gentle reminders about how to behave, Cravey said.

“There is nothing but joy and happiness that comes from them,” she said, “and the kids know it and see it. … We do not feel that their level of service to our school can be replaced. Whether it’s an early morning or a late evening PTA-sponsored event, managing the supplies for our school, remembering where a box of supplies was stored from last year, or just basically serving all the needs of everyone in that building from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., they are there.”

Based on spending her entire 36-year teaching career at Mathews before retiring nine years ago, Gierer called Smith and Brown “part of the rich and storied history of our school” and questioned why they should become “collateral damage in repairing an ineffective system? … I’d be willing to bet there are other elementary schools that have custodians who are as treasured as our Cleo and Joe.”

Gierer asserted, “They’re not robots. You can’t pluck them out of one school and stick them in another and expect them to be as effective as they are.”

She also declared, “There comes a time when humanity must supersede financial statistics. I understand and applaud your fiscal responsibility. I’m a taxpayer – I expect no less – but I am here tonight to ask you, respectfully, to vote against this proposal. I challenge Mr. Goldberg to do the right thing for each one of these men and women. Interview every custodial staff and every principal. Find the teams that are working and leave them alone. Sure, that will take time, but these men and women and the integrity of the elementary school communities are worth the investment.”

Gierer concluded, “You all have the power and the responsibility to just do the right thing and save Cleo and Joe.”

Nobody from the board or the administration responded before moving to the next item on the agenda.

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 11:23 AM with the headline "Parent, retired teacher passionately object to school district’s plan."