Coupeville Sports

Pete Gebhard, seen with daughter Gabriella, is the lead custodian for the Coupeville School District.

The lead custodian for the Coupeville School District is calling on the school board to address a year-long shortage in staff.

Pete Gebhard has sent a letter to the directors, which is included with the agenda for their March 28 meeting.

In it, he states the maintenance department have not been able to “replace the full-time custodian at the middle school.”

“We are now coming up on one year since Dan Burns resigned,” Gebhard writes. “I have expressed my concerns about this decision to both (Superintendent) Steve King and (Business Manager) Brian Gianello via email or in person conversations.

“As of yet, I have not been given a solution to this issue. I have been told that we would discuss seeking a remedy to the shortage at a later time once the budget situation changes.”

Gebhard states the current crew has had to flex schedules “to accommodate for this significant loss of work hours.”

This has increased the workload for remaining workers, while “many other cleaning tasks are being left undone due to lack of time.”

“In the 20 plus years that I have been a custodian of the Coupeville School District, there has never been a school year where there was no middle school custodian,” Gebhard writes.

“We have never been asked to find a way to cover the middle school building by stretching out our work hours and cutting back our cleaning services, in addition to our regular areas of responsibility.

“I’m not entirely sure as to why our district has decided that the current situation is sufficient or that we just have to work our way through this shortage of funding, but I find it deeply concerning that we would sacrifice cleaning/sanitizing/disinfecting and stretch our current custodial crew out in this manner.”

Gebhard also expresses the concern the new superintendent, when hired later this year, may decide to keep staffing at current levels.

“At our current custodial staffing level, we are holding ground on basic cleaning, with no time for deep cleaning or classroom sanitizing,” he writes.

“If we were to lose more custodial hours in the form of a RIF, we would be forced to move our custodial staffing hours again and quite frankly this would likely require the elementary school to be placed on an every other day cleaning schedule.

“It’s really hard for me to say this, but our buildings will continue to not receive the cleaning they need, and this will result in unsanitary conditions for our students.”

In the letter he calls for the situation to be addressed.

“It is my honest feeling that if we are told that we must lose another custodian for the upcoming school year, the impact to our custodial staff and buildings will be tremendous,” Gebhard writes.

“Our custodians will be overtaxed with larger areas to clean, and our buildings will suffer and degrade at a quicker rate.

“We really need to strongly consider what our cleaning goals should be for our district before implementing any further changes to our custodial staff. I can’t emphasize the importance of this enough.”

To read Gebhard’s letter in full, pop over to:

Click to access P%20Gebhard%20Letter%20to%20the%20Board%20.pdf

UPDATE 3/25 — The letter is no longer available to read, as it was removed from BoardDocs at the request of its author.

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