By Staff
Maintenance of the district buildings begins in January for the upcoming summer.
It starts with a review of outstanding projects from the 20-year Facility Plan, deferred maintenance projects, School Improvement Process, athletic needs, administrative and teacher input.
This information is then organized by building, prioritized by need with health and safety being of primary importance.
Preliminary budgets are then developed for the proposed projects.
It's no secret that school budgets (the per-student amount of money we receive from the state) are not keeping up with the needs of many of Michigan's school districts.
Dowagiac Union Schools faces these same challenges -this means the competition for maintenance dollars is fierce.
This is where long-range planning is important in the process and working together as a team to achieve the district's goals.
After budgets are developed for these projects, all projects are again reviewed, re-prioritized and the process of deciding what will become a summer project begins.
Once priorities are established and receive Board of Education approval, the process of scheduling work begins.
To the novice the impression is that when kids leave for summer vacation the buildings are vacant.
Fortunately, this is not the case at Dowagiac Schools.
Not a day goes by in the summer when kids are not in some of the buildings for summer school or athletic camps, which provide unique challenges in scheduling of projects.
My preference is to begin projects the Monday following the last day of school for students.
It can't be emphasized enough that we only have about nine weeks to complete all construction projects and clean buildings in preparation for the start of school.
This in itself is a challenge because all elementary custodians team clean and it becomes my responsibility to see that buildings are opened when contractors arrive and locked at the end of the day.
Another function of summer building maintenance is teacher requests. Forms are passed out to the building principals for their teaching staff.
Teachers have the opportunity to request items to be completed for their classroom.
These forms are returned to the building principals, prioritized and sent to the maintenance department for scheduling.
Timelines are critical in this process. School budgets end on June 30 and building budgets that can support work requests are filled. Budgets that cannot support these requests must wait until July 1 to support these purchases.
In an ideal world this would all come together as outlined, but sometimes things become a bit more challenging.
Somehow, someway in the midst of building cleaning, summer camps, mowing acres of grass each week and setting up for fall athletics, these projects get completed in time for the opening day of school.
Before you know it, it's January and the process begins again.