{"id":327,"date":"2025-12-02T18:41:57","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T19:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mssqlguide.com\/?p=327"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:55:17","slug":"custodians-are-the-glue-of-school-buildings-how-districts-can-keep-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mssqlguide.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/02\/custodians-are-the-glue-of-school-buildings-how-districts-can-keep-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Custodians Are the ‘Glue’ of School Buildings. How Districts Can Keep Them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Students wouldn\u2019t be able to thrive if the cafeteria, hallways, bathrooms, and classrooms weren\u2019t clean enough to learn and work. The role of custodians is critical\u2014one district leader even called them the \u201cunsung heroes\u201d of education. <\/p>\n

In schools across the country, custodians do more than keep campuses clean. Earlier this year, for example, Andy Markus, a custodian in Utah, was named the National Education Support Professional of the Year<\/a> by the National Education Association for his mentoring, which has improved students\u2019 behavior and academic engagement. <\/i><\/p>\n

And when custodians stay at a school for years, they develop expertise and institutional knowledge that can be invaluable, school leaders say. But often, schools face problems with keeping these employees, in part due to low pay. <\/p>\n

In one notable example, 30,000 custodians, bus drivers, teacher aides, and other support staff in Los Angeles went on a three-day strike over low wages in 2023<\/a>. This action resulted in a 30% wage increase and a retroactive pay increase between $4,000 and $8,000.<\/p>\n

However, even with the increases in pay for some districts, the average school custodian made $17.10 an hour or $35,564 a year in 2024, according to ZipRecruiter<\/a>. In addition, most custodians don\u2019t work full-time, which can create unsustainable situations for many workers.<\/p>\n

Charles Ogdan, the director of secondary teaching and learning for the Forest Hills school district in Cincinnati, conducted a project on custodian retention and growth for his school district. He spoke to Education Week about the importance of custodians and how to best support them. <\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Could you explain the role of a school custodian?<\/h2>\n

A great building custodian is like glue. It just keeps everything together. When a custodian owns a building and treats it like their house\u2014keeping it clean and keeping it running and maintained\u2014there\u2019s hardly anything better from a cultural standpoint.<\/p>\n

A lot of people don\u2019t realize the impact that a custodian has\u2014whether it\u2019s the boiler operating room, the chiller operating room, or the filters being changed in said boilers and chillers, plumbing, maintenance of the cove base, waxing of the floors, painting on the walls, or a cafeteria getting cleaned up three times a day. I can\u2019t say enough about a custodian in a building.<\/p>\n

How do custodians learn and develop their skills throughout their careers?<\/h2>\n

That\u2019s going [to differ] district by district. Some will come to a school district with a skill set or a knowledge base. What we\u2019re working on at Forest Hills, which was a big part of my project, is doing an inventory of our custodial staff of what skills they have. For example, HVAC skills, forklift skills, and mechanical skills. <\/p>\n

One of the visions of my project is to create targeted professional development for custodians on those professional development days. On those days, a lot of times, custodians are playing catch-up. <\/p>\n

[Say it\u2019s] a half a day, and we take Chuck, who has said, \u201cI\u2019m good with my hands, but I\u2019ve never anchored a screw into cinder block,\u201d and we take Jennifer, who is really good with her hands, but she would love to learn how to do some mild plumbing. We set up targeted intervention, targeted training so that they can grow their skill set. <\/p>\n

If they feel they\u2019re being invested in, theoretically, that should increase our retention. And then it also helps you lead to the growth of custodians within your district, to a head custodian and potentially to maintenance or a supervisor. So then you create a \u201cgrow your own\u201d [program].<\/p>\n

What makes an experienced custodian?<\/h2>\n

There are multiple shifts within the custodian\u2019s day. For example, our elementary [schools] have two shifts: the first and the second shift. But our high and middle schools have the first, second, and third shifts because of how long our buildings are open. <\/p>\n

A good custodian is somebody who watches over their building, meaning they\u2019re going to take care of it. They\u2019re going to know when something needs attention, to create a good system within whatever shift they\u2019re in. And they\u2019re going to understand what use of [cleaning] chemicals works for what situation. They\u2019re going to be able to assess specific situations and, if they have the authority or the autonomy to fix something. [They\u2019re going] to fix things when they need fixing, or minimally, let either the head custodian or maintenance know that something needs to be fixed.<\/p>\n

Sometimes our third shift custodians are on third shift because they want to be on third shift, so they don\u2019t have a ton of human interaction throughout the course of their shift. But our first and second shift custodians [tend to] have some good people skills to interact with staff, community members, and students.<\/p>\n

A head custodian has to be all those [qualities] plus a really good communicator; they have to be extremely organized. They have to be able to anticipate things before they have [occurred] or be prepared for what could happen.<\/p>\n

What are some of the challenges affecting the retention of school custodians?<\/h2>\n

We lost 53% of our custodians in the last three years to retirement. We are not seeing a number of people graduating high school or in the age range of 18 to 24 getting into the custodial business. <\/p>\n

Part of it is a bit of a stigma among recent high school graduates. In our district, 70% of our kids go to college upon graduation. [Getting] a good, steady job with a good pension and benefits is not emphasized as much as it used to be.<\/p>\n

Going into the workforce as a custodian, potentially at the school you went to, [can be hard]. I haven\u2019t done it here, but I did some of that in a former district, and we would cycle them down to elementary schools to make sure they\u2019re not with students they went to high school with. [Otherwise], if somebody pukes in the hallway, they\u2019re going to show up with the sand and clean it up, and those are people they went to school with a year ago. <\/p>\n

As far as retention, we\u2019re not the only industry hurting. Public education can offer a competitive wage, a consistent wage, and excellent retirement and good benefits, but due to COVID, everybody was hurt. <\/p>\n

But … we can\u2019t just raise salaries. Private industry or corporations can potentially pay more for an employee\u2019s wage [as inflation increases]. We can\u2019t do that in Ohio, not until you go back to the voters.<\/p>\n

What do you think would help with retention and growth for custodians?<\/h2>\n

A big thing that we are looking at doing is creating a cadence around professional development with days that are already built into our instructional calendar and then creating additional cadence to get feedback from our custodians. What are some things that we could do to improve? What are some growth opportunities? What are your desires?<\/p>\n

We sent a survey to all 44 of our custodians. Only 27 responded. Then, I did a one-on-one with each head custodian to dig into the answers. Thirty percent of respondents said they\u2019re not interested in promotions or overtime, they\u2019re good where they\u2019re at. Not everybody is going to have an interest in growing or elevating.<\/p>\n

Custodians holistically enjoy their jobs and take ownership of their respective buildings with pride. Head custodians find themselves losing some sleep during certain times of the year due to the volume of responsibility they shoulder of the three shifts. This was a huge takeaway. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no built-in time where shifts overlap. To have any standardized feedback or collaboration, it\u2019s not built into the schedule. The head custodian has to decide to show up early or stay late. A majority of our respondents shared that they do have specific skills, such as drywalling, plumbing, electrical, construction, mechanical work, forklift operating, etc. We were able to come away with some really good information.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the difference between custodial and maintenance jobs?<\/h2>\n

There are custodians and maintenance workers. Sometimes that relationship goes very well in a district. Sometimes it can be a little adversarial. <\/p>\n

For example, let\u2019s say a pencil sharpener is ripped off the wall in a classroom\u2014that\u2019s pretty light maintenance. You might have to re-drill the holes, but you just put new screws in it and install it. If there isn\u2019t a good understanding of that, custodians could say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s not my job. That\u2019s a maintenance job.\u201d Maintenance would be irritated because they have to come to a school and hang a pencil sharpener, when they should probably be out working on some pumps and bigger items. <\/p>\n

We have those [roles] pretty clearly defined here. Maintenance gets paid at a higher level than custodians. So, if you level up to maintenance, it\u2019s a district level position, so you\u2019re going from building to building, and it\u2019s a higher pay scale.<\/p>\n

Is there anything else that you want to mention?<\/h2>\n

The reason I did this work on custodians is [because] everything really hot in society right now is either on paraprofessionals, bus drivers, or teachers. Custodians are a lot of times the forgotten and unsung heroes. <\/p>\n

I spent a lot of time as a building principal, and [custodians] do a lot, and they don\u2019t get thanked enough. I took it on as my personal mission to make sure not only did we appreciate them, but we leaned into the why and the how, and then really hoping to come away [with] something positive, specifically in our district, to retain and grow our custodians. <\/p>\n

This research is just the starting line, so I\u2019m excited to see where it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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