With all the recent growth within the Gilroy Unified School District over the last few years, the board of trustees took action at their last meeting to add more custodial and maintenance staff in a move to ensure new facilities are properly cared for.
The board unanimously approved the addition of two full-time grounds workers Oct. 16 and the creation of a lead custodian position. All three positions would be funded from the district’s routine maintenance account.
Citing the recently completed Don Christopher Sports Complex and the sports complex at Gilroy High, GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores said custodial staff have taken on additional responsibilities at both schools and they’ve been restriping athletic fields, mainly on overtime, and that the positions are “desperately needed.”
“We continue to grow every year with more and more facilities and more and more staff—and we have not in any way compensated for that,” Flores said. “We have a stadium now thanks to the Christopher family, but that’s another whole area of responsibility that is going to pull someone away from their current duties to tend to that facility. The idea here is to have these two people (grounds workers) assigned to all the athletic facilities at each high school and therefore that will be their dedicated responsibility.”
GUSD Maintenance Manager Dan McAuliffe was optimistic that the addition of staff will help better care for newer facilities, and allow his other crews to focus on other jobs.
“We’ve got a beautiful state-of-the-art stadium and we need to preserve it,” added McAuliffe. “If we can get Gilroy High into shape, it will take a tremendous burden off my crew. My painting crew dedicates half the week to painting lines on athletic fields instead of painting schools and our schools desperately need to be painted and maintained. We can keep our fields looking great—we can be proud of them—and it won’t be a burden on our crew because we’ll have people in place.”
During the meeting, Director of Facilities Planning and Management James Bombaci gave the board an update on how Measure P funds are revitalizing multiple schools district-wide.
While the Dr. TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy, known as GECA, was slated to receive a multipurpose building by the end of the year, Bombaci said there has been an unexpected change of plans. GUSD must submit building drawings and plans to the Division of the State Architect, and when the plans for GECA were submitted, DSA had implemented a brand new code. Bombaci said the plans were returned and brought up to code, but it will take some time for the state to complete its review.
“It was just a bad situation, so unfortunately, GECA will be stretched out a little bit,” he added. “We’ll put in the bathroom, administration building and the MPR by the end of summer.”
Over at Glen View Elementary School, contractors are working to install classrooms, Bombaci said. Teachers will likely be in situated in the new classrooms by the end of December, he said.
