• Auto scrubber and vacuums aid custodial staff
Everyone in Lincoln County School District No. 2 knows who Warren Hicks is. He’s the guy you call when something that should work doesn’t, or when something breaks and you need it fixed. Hicks is the Director of Maintenance for a district and community that has seen significant growth in the past two decades.
LCSD No. 2 spans from Sage Junction to Alpine with facilities and assets spread across a big chunk of the area. Over the past 15 years, the communities in Star Valley are bigger, there are more kids in those schools and the residents are using those facilities more than ever. Boys and girls soccer, indoor track and field and girls wrestling are all programs that have been added. One thing that hasn’t necessarily grown is the staff that tries to keep up with it all.
“What we’re seeing that is hard to quantify is that expectation levels have changed so dramatically,” Hicks said. “For example, the jump to 4A, we’ve added teams which means more practice, more kids, more teams and more use of the facilities and this impacts our staff greatly on the next day.”
The challenges aren’t just the increase of the students and usage of district assets, it’s also more challenging to find staff who are willing and able to do the job.
“The big thing for us is that right now [we are] fully staffed but that’s a first in a long time,” Hicks said. “We’re finally back up to where our traditional numbers were. That’s great, but, for one thing we are looking at technology to help.”
“The public is doing more now than ever before. They use our facilities which is great but we still have to clean up afterwards and that is more days for us. There are more opportunities for kids and that tends to land back at the schools. The amount of use has just greatly increased especially the last five years.”
According to Hicks, his custodial staff recently lost a cumulative 90 years of experience with recent retirees.
“You can’t replace that instantly,” he added. “A new person does their best but they don’t know all the tricks or prioritize like the old guys used to. So we look into how can we help them out and help them succeed.”
So with the addition of an autonomous floor scrubber last year, the district is now saving roughly 14 hours a week of employee time. That’s time that a person can go do things that only a person can do while the machine does what it was made to do.
“It’s always running,” Hicks continued. “Just scrubbing hallways. It allows that person who used to have to sit on it and steer, to do other tasks.”
Also in a post-COVID 19 world, there is more expectation for cleanliness. For example, think about how many times countertops are touched by different hands in a building with roughly 1,000 people. And that’s just Star Valley High School.
“There’s also a heightened awareness of cleanliness and hygiene from not just the public but from us as well,” Hicks said. “There are a lot of things that are high on the radar now that were not ten years ago. Disinfecting high-touch surfaces and such. We’ve raised our level of services.”
With wrestling season getting underway this past weekend, it’s a sport not only with an added program, but one with an emphasis on hygiene when it comes to practices and competition.
“Our people are needing to mop wrestling mats three times a day,” Hicks said. “Setting up a mat on a floor elsewhere takes an hour they normally didn’t have to. Now with the need for more facilities there are more locker room usage. All of these things add up.”
Just this past week, a new vacuum came online to help keep carpets clean and with the success of these machines, there will likely be more of them in the future.
“We just finished be mapping the high school and got it going,” Hicks replied. “We’ll have two machines going all night.”
