Herricks Board Considers Custodial Cuts for 2012-13

At the outset of the Herricks Board of Education’s meeting this past Thursday night at the , Superintendent Dr. Jack Bierwirth announced the district had its  and major cuts have yet to be made.

While those major cuts have not yet been announced, the board has proposed a significant reduction in the facilities department staff for the 2012-13 school year. The board expects between three to five members of the department to retire under a previously negotiated early retirement incentive in order to reduce staffing.

“The board approved a retirement incentive with a return date of no later than February 15 and that was designed so that when the board meets on the 16th we will know whether we have any people taking the retirement,” Bierwirth said. “Our objective is, by the night of the 15th, to have either per figures in those areas or best estimates that the board and the community can use in moving forward.”

Director of Facilities Jim Brown and Vincent Haughwout presented their plans for operations and department staffing on during the meeting.

“We all sat down and went over the current situation with the number of people that we have who will most likely be retiring and not replacing that staff with new bodies and going with the staff that we already have,” Brown said.

The plan is as follows:

• Split custodial shifts into half days/half nights.
• Elementary schools: Custodian hours will be changed to 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., a bus driver will be assigned to assist from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. when available, a custodian and a cleaner will be assigned to clean the entire building from 3:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., a floater will be assigned to work with the night shift in each building once a week and will also cover any vacations or sick time in a given building.
• The  and middle school will cover their open positions with the staff they have with no additional manpower.
• The community center will have a cleaner from the elementary school transfer to the night shift.
• All elementary schools will be closed at 6 p.m.
• All board meetings will be held at the community center.

In addition, students will be required to put all chairs on desks at the end of the school day and take them down at the beginning of the school day, garbage pails will be brought to the door for pick-up and special events and parties should be kept in one area and not in individual classrooms, especially if food and drinks are served.

“We had to develop a plan that would organize the teams in such a way that they would be able to handle the cleaning, maintenance and grounds to keep up the buildings the way we have them now,” Brown said. “This was an effort developed by the whole staff and we feel that this will enable us to keep the buildings as clean and healthy as they are now, our services won’t degrade any, and we’re at a point where we feel comfortable enough that this should help us continue on until such a day that we can hire somebody else.”

This plan “will change lives,” Brown said, with the pay-off being that deeper cuts in instructional programs, staffing and more drastic changes in the operations of the facilities will be avoided now and in the future.   

“We expect three to five people to go and we have cut four positions,” Bierwirth said, pointing out that the cuts avoid up to $20,000 in unemployment costs per person hired and then terminated. “Our intent is to use this to drop staffing and operations down to the level that we would have been at otherwise by 2013-14, so we’re doing it a year early.”