Lots of elbow grease over winter break

By MERRILL BALASSONE
mbalassone@modbee.com

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As students spend their last precious vacation days tinkering with newly acquired Nintendo Wiis and Apple iPods, school custodians are scrambling to get classrooms ready for their return to campus Monday.

About 150 workers, from plumbers to groundskeepers, have been on duty over the two-week winter break in Modesto City Schools, scraping globs of once-chewed gum from furniture, sanitizing bathrooms and painting offices a fresh coat of white.

Custodians in some year-round elementary schools have just a few days during the entire year to clean without students or teachers on campus. Most Northern San Joaquin Valley students are nearing the end of their two-week breaks.

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"It's hard to shuffle 34 schools into that short period," said Joe Morales, a 40-year veteran of the district's maintenance team. "Needless to say, all the crews are busy."

Disinfecting bathrooms, classrooms and locker rooms has become even more critical to fend off the spread of illnesses such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

The staph infection, nicknamed "the superbug," is particularly dangerous because it does not respond to common antibiotics such as penicillin.

It showed up this fall at Downey, Beyer, Turlock and Hughson high schools and in the Oakdale Joint Unified School District. A Modesto girl from Somerset Middle School fought a massive infection for nearly five weeks in a Sacramento hospital before returning home last month.

Modesto City Schools recently decided to purchase bottles of foaming alcohol-based hand sanitizer for each district classroom, at the urging of lead nurse Shari Lowe.

"(Lowe) did a lot of research on how this bacteria was spread," said Roger Orth, director of maintenance and operations. "After all her research, she thought one thing we could do would be to provide hand sanitizer."

The winter break also is prime time for vandalism at schools.

At least one classroom at Mark Twain Junior High was broken in to during the winter break, making it the third break-in there in a month. And a handful of west Modesto schools continue to be marred by graffiti faster than custodians can cover it.

"We're still having our graffiti wars all over town," Orth said. "We're getting popped every weekend."

At Burbank Elementary School last week, maintenance workers fixed broken windows and struggled to keep up with the graffiti sprayed onto doors, walls and windows.

Even a sign urging "Responsibility" was tagged with permanent marker.

"You name it, the graffiti is all over it," sighed Burbank custodian J.R. Boyd.

Bee staff writer Merrill Balassone can be reached at mbalassone@modbee.com or 578-2337.