By Larry Efird

When teachers and students return to school each year following their summer break, they are usually greeted by newly waxed and polished floors, along with  the smell of fresh paint. Unless you have ever been in a school during the summer months, you cannot fully appreciate, nor imagine, how much work goes into getting the building ready for another year of learning. In late June through mid-August, schools often become construction zones, filled with all the accompanying noise, sweat and dust of a hard hat area.

School buildings are a completely different environment with no one around except a few staff members and multiple crews of painters, electricians and plumbers. Rather than the clamor of students reaching crescendos in the cafeteria and hallways, the sound of drills and cleaning equipment create another style of  cacophonous symphony.

Floors don’t magically get shiny when the students leave in June. Furniture has to be moved from each room, floors cleaned and wax stripped, and then several coats of new wax applied.   School furniture is not always the most convenient type of furniture to move — especially overladen filing cabinets of the fire-proof variety, which can weigh  hundreds of pounds apiece, so just getting the rooms free of clutter is a job in and of itself. (Moving the average  overloaded teacher’s desk is no picnic either!)

In every school I’ve ever worked, I’ve always admired the custodial staff. They are the unsung heroes of education without a doubt. Every day, they silently go about performing their miraculous tasks behind the scenes, much of the time unappreciated, I’m afraid.  Their duties range anywhere from cleaning a disgusting bathroom toilet to removing a bat that somehow managed to enter the building when no one was looking.

This past summer, I had the honor of working alongside some of our custodians. I got a first-hand glimpse of what a few of them refer to as “40 days of hell.” I now know what they mean. However hard they work during the normal 10 months of school gets ramped up to  a whole new level in the summer as the dirt from one year gets scrubbed away before the polish of a new year can be applied.

My primary  job this summer was to move entire classrooms of teacher belongings from one school to another, due to the restructuring of our elementary schools. I eventually learned how to maneuver, somewhat adeptly, a pallet jack and a pallet on a not-so-big box truck. I also learned how to shrink-wrap stacks of boxes filled with books and other teacher odds and ends that sat on the pallets waiting to be moved across town.  (Teachers, in theory, were supposed to pack their own boxes and pallets, but as we in education know, what begins in theory oftentimes remains in theory.) I found myself wanting to award all the teachers who followed the directions — as well as the ones who carefully labeled all their boxes!

One day the high school band was conducting a summer  band camp in the gymnasium at  one of the elementary schools. One of my students  saw me out of my normal teacher attire, while I was  dizzying myself surrounding pallets with a healthy layer of  shrink wrap.  He inquisitively asked, “Mr. Efird, are you getting paid to do this?” I was quite amused at his question. I was also appreciative that he would even think that I would volunteer to spend my summer moving school furniture and supplies from one campus to another for free.  hat, however, is one of those duties where a quote  from a character on  the old television show “Friends” might apply: “I wish I could have, but I really didn’t  want to…” Yes, I wish my professional loyalties were so strong and pure that I would consider volunteering my services for an entire summer to the school system, but like most teachers, I needed a summer paycheck so I could continue doing what I love for another year.   

Now as another school year begins yet again, I have shed my summer work clothes of shorts and T-shirts for my khakis and polos. But I have not put off my appreciation for our  school custodians.

Larry Efird teaches at A.L. Brown High School in Kannapolis.