Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
School District 55’s maintenance department received high marks during an independent review by the Willamette Education Service District, performed in response to complaints that District 55 employees appeared to spend too much time goofing off on the job.
“From all viewpoints, your district has an outstanding maintenance and custodial program,” said John Smith of the Willamette ESD. “Your district looks great. Your principals are very satisfied with the overall cleanliness of their facilities and by the service received from the maintenance staff.
“You have an extremely knowledgeable and highly respected supervisor in charge of the program. And most importantly, your maintenance and custodial staffs are talented, dedicated and enjoy working for the Sweet Home School District.”
District 55 Supt. Larry Horton said an independent contractor prepared the “unbiased” report.
“Overall, the report was most favorable regarding the maintenance and custodial department,” Horton said. “He was especially impressed with the multiple talents of our staff” and that they worked closely with bond project contractors.
The report included “a few” recommendations to which the district will respond, he said.
“Prior to my arrival, there had apparently been complaints from the public about maintenance staff not working,” Horton said. “People would see them taking breaks and eating their lunches.”
The district began having staff return to the Central Office for breaks to avoid giving the impression they are not working when they should be, Horton said. That resulted in complaints about staff members driving back to the Central Office instead of taking their breaks on the campuses where they work.
“The concern was raised that, that was an inefficient use of time,” he said. “The board wanted someone in the know to be able to tell us which one of these concepts would be best for us to follow.”
The District 55 School Board set a goal to review the department using an outside source for this school year, Horton said.
The bottom line in the report is that “asking them to come back to the shop is not an abuse or using their time inefficiently,” he said. In fact, it provides them the opportunity to get new assignments or pick up equipment they need on the campuses where they work.
Smith said the practice of taking breaks at the office may seem inefficient, but offers “significant” benefits. “Number one (is) being to ensure staff are allowed to take their full break while also allowing break times to be supervised, so they are not abused,” he said.
“Another significant benefit to the district is that it appears to eliminate or keep down the complaints often heard from the public when they witness district employees ‘just sitting around’ when in fact they are actually taking their break. This was a significant PR problem in the past for the Sweet Home District and apparently had been the same case with others contacted when researching this report.”
The report did recommend that Holley and Crawfordsville staff not return to the district office for their breaks because they are so much farther away, but the district already recognized that, Horton said.
“We’ve investigated the complaints and found them to be erroneous,” Horton said. Instead of just stopping with a district investigation, the district took another step to investigate the claims using an unbiased investigator.
Smith had no recommendations to improve the efficiency of the custodial department.
“Custodial staff have very well-written work schedules and appear to stay busy throughout the work day,” Smith said. “Their work hours also reflect the needs of the district in their support of students and staff, and by appearance they are also keeping the schools very clean.”
Smith offered three recommendations regarding maintenance.
First, he recommended improved relations between the School Board and maintenance department, with the maintenance supervisor compiling a list each month of completed work orders and other projects, such as bond activities, and provide it to the superintendent for reading or introduction to minutes at board meetings.
Second, a maintenance worker mentioned that staff members spend a significant amount of time filling out paperwork, Smith said.
“While understanding the need for reports and record keeping, efficiency might be gained by keeping your maintenance personnel working in the field,” he said.
“A possibility to ease this would be for maintenance to hire a high school student on a work experience program to perform data entry and word processing. The district purchases some inexpensive mini-tape recorders and passes them out to maintenance staff to record what they need to have documented. The student uses the tapes to perform the actual documentation.”
Third, “the admission by staff during the interview process of missing or not taking breaks should raise concern of supervisory staff,” Smith said. “Mandated by law, staff are entitled to and must take uninterrupted breaks during the work day. All staff should be reminded of this, and supervisory staff should ensure employees take all their breaks in accordance with their employee contract.”
“This audit did not uncover any areas where significant gains in efficiency could be obtained by your district at this time.”