School year kicks off with custodian shortage

MANAWA – The School District of Manawa is kicking off the school year with an all-hands-on-deck cleaning effort that includes some staff vacuuming their own offices to keep the focus on student classrooms.

At a school board meeting last week, it was noted that Elementary Principal Danni Brauer spent nearly a month searching for a custodian to hire after the recent departure of custodian Dee Dee Lowney.

Brauer told the board that finding a replacement has been an uphill battle, noting that some candidates failed to return phone calls, others did not show up for scheduled start dates, and some were disqualified because their background checks did not clear.

Remaining custodial staff members have worked to prepare classrooms, though some details fell behind, such as classroom rugs not being as deeply cleaned as in previous years, she said.

To compensate, administrative office staff have taken over their own basic maintenance.

“I know office people are vacuuming the office because that’s just not our priority,” Brauer said. “It’s classrooms that are a priority right now, so we’re doing what we can.”

Brauer noted that a custodian applicant submitted paperwork on the day of last week’s board meeting and had an interview scheduled for the following morning.

District Administrator Ryan Peterson said the district also restructured its student summer cleaning crews. Instead of deploying unsupervised high school and college workers as it had in the past, the district paired a paraprofessional supervisor with two students to tackle sprucing up the buildings, pulling weeds and painting classrooms.

In other preparations for the return to school, it was noted at the meeting that Peterson personally spent about 20 hours operating a skid steer to help spread 400 yards of mulch on the elementary school’s new playground.