A janitor cleans the senior dining hall left dirty by students Nov. 5
Coming clean
Comal custodians earn lowest pay in area
They take out the trash.
They clean the cafeterias.
They wipe the windows.
And they make $11 an hour, less than they can make at H-E-B.
Comal school district custodians are short staffed and underpaid.
Ideally this campus would have 14 custodians, but only seven clean the school now.
“We have them in two shifts, so we have a morning shift that usually starts around 6 or 6:30 in the morning, because they’re the ones that have to unlock all the gates outside and then come inside,” principal Michael Wahl said.
“Those guys typically will work to about 1:30 in the afternoon, so that will be that. Then, we have the other shift that comes in around 1 p.m. And the majority of them are on the afternoon shift, because that’s a lot of cleaning the restrooms, restocking to get the school ready for the next day.”
In Comal ISD custodians make less than their counterparts in other districts. New custodians started at $10 per hour; they could have made $15 per hour in San Antonio ISD.
This is not unique to the Comal school district. In the article, “No Bus Drivers, Custodians, or Subs. What’s Really Behind Schools’ Staffing Shortages?” Mark Lieberman reported for EdWeek districts face these troubles nationwide.
“(Causes include) Fears over health and safety, frustrations over longstanding pay gaps and inequities, and political disagreements over masks and vaccines,” Lieberman wrote. “Some of these shortages are far more severe than usual, while others existed long before the pandemic.”
The custodial staff will get paid another $1.50 hour after the Voter Approved Tax Ratification Election portion of the 2021 bond passed Nov. 2.
On occasion the janitorial staff is assigned one wing. That means one janitor cleans an entire wing. That includes about 20 classrooms, all with trash bins, windows, and dirty floors. That doesn’t include the sports facilities, locker rooms or bathrooms.
“School teachers and staff deserve much more pay than they get, and Comal has the lowest teacher pay in the area, which doesn’t seem right to me given the work that they do for the students there,” 2021 graduate Nicole Peterson said, “especially the support staff like custodians and bus drivers.”