I’m confused.
The Times reported the other day that the Texas Association of School Business Officials is telling EPISD that they have 70 more maintenance workers than The Association of Physical Plant Administrators suggests for schools.
According to the report EPISD has 198 maintenance workers but only needs 128.
If that is the case, why is it that many of our schools are in such disrepair that the district is considering demolishing them and building new facilities?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Maintenance in this case refers to people that do things like cut grass, replace broken windows, patch a hole in a floor, paint a hallway, remove graffiti, in other words , small stuff. They are not the same type of people that would REPLACE a roof, or install turf or bring a campus up to ADA compliance. . The building repair issues are much larger than the types of things that a custodian , or a general maintainence worker can do and are basically there because the average campus in EPISD is over 60 years old.
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Rumor has it that episd will use alta Vista as new hq.
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Deputy Dawg, I always believed that preventive maintenance will extend the life of any building by many years. So that good, regular maintenance will prevent the need for replacing a roof, or carry out work that goes beyond maintenance. As for bringing a campus – or any other building – up to ADA standards, that should not fall to a maintenance person anyway. That kind of work is not maintenance. The age of the campuses should not matter one whit, as long as that campus has been faithfully maintained.
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It’s thanks to those maintenance workers that the buildings are still useable, clean, and safe for the occupants, even though some are very old. As Deputy Dawg says, regular maintenance is one thing but building repair contracting is another. The district owes much to those maintenance workers who make the best with what they’ve got. The district “saves” money year after year because it puts off spending on those repairs as long as they can, then finds it more feasible to demolish and rebuild because they can come to the taxpayers and push for some expensive bond issue. This study is a crock of you know what because, once again, it’s the district trying to save money on the backs of these poorly paid, lowest paid, powerless workers instead of cutting some of those cushy administrative and consultant jobs…like those that got the district into hot water for years and the top dog ended up in jail.
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…and now the guy is doing those building repair jobs with his roofing company!
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Dan Wever Isn’t it funny how the EPISD will use an Administrator “Union” to provide data to the trustees that shows the district has too many lower level employees. The Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO) are supposedly experts in district staffing issues and use other data sources for reference. They use bogus standards to show that the EPISD has too many employees in Maintenance, Transportation and Safety. Why do I say the standards they use are bogus? Because there are companies that use different standards and the numbers are different depending upon which company you use. Most of these companies use square footage as a basis for how much work should be accomplished by the workers. I feel sorry for the Trustees trying to figure out what all the bogus numbers they are presented with mean.
I wonder if the basis for square footage standards take into consideration the weather in El Paso like we had yesterday, when you could just barely see the mountains because of dust and blowing sand. Do they take into consideration the large number of portables the district has, equipment has to be moved from portable to portable to clean them and the square footage is very low? Do they take into consideration the large area that the EPISD covers thus making maintenance efforts harder just because of the distances traveled between trouble calls?
Using TASBO’s bogus figures the district should be able to get rid of 62 janitors. Of course if they are wrong and the standards they use are not valid that who suffers?
Well of course the children suffer by having to attend dirty or less than clean school classrooms and buildings. Kinda goes against the EPISD core belief that Students come first in all actions and decision-making doesn’t it? TASBO also recommended 59 playground staff positions could save $950,000. Just turn the kids loose and they will make sure nobody gets hurt or bullied, oh sure!
How much money did this study cost and how was the company chosen . It seems our new CFO was a director and president of TASBO before coming to the EPISD, the public might see this and think there might be a conflict of interest in TASBO’s selection.
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Many of the high-school students who eat lunch off campus leave restaurants in a total mess. You also see them throwing down trash on private property and on the school grounds. If they would learn respect and clean up after themselves, that might help to reduce the janitorial work load.
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I’ve noted a couple of high schools where students took their trays out of the lunch area and into other parts of the school, eat their lunch, then leave the tray with trash, plate, and utensils right there on a wall or on the floor for somebody else to clean up. Where is Miss Manners when you need her?
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Exactly! And where are the cafeteria monitors who should stop them from leaving the lunchroom with trays of food?
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The Times article indicated that staffing levels were above hospital standards. How do hospitals compare to public schools?
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Understand It is a cash cow!
There will be a negative vote for any request from EPISD .
Sent from my iPhone
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