MSBSD custodial staff crucial to covid mitigation

Each MSBSD school has their own mitigation plan that relies on the nightly disinfecting of each surface in each classroom across each school in the Valley. After the first positive case was announced in Valley schools at Machetanz Elementary, Pralle and her team sprung into well coordinated, thoroughly planned action to disinfect the entire school building, as they have done after each of the 28 confirmed positives to date in MSBSD schools.

“Actually I was really happy with what we had come up with. The system worked really well. It was a lot faster than what I originally thought we were going to be,” said Pralle.

Students are not utilizing lockers and must bring their belongings with them. Students are also not eating lunches in one common area, but in classrooms. Former Sherrod Elementary teacher Tom Hermon retired in the spring of 2019, but returned a year later to work as a custodian at Palmer High School. Pralle said that she lost numerous employees to retirement or other job opportunities. The MSBSD has put a halt, but not a freeze on hiring. Executive Director of Human Resources Katherine Gardner detailed at the last school board meeting that positions are being filled, but carefully. However, Pralle has found difficulty staffing each school as the coronavirus pandemic continues to infect Alaskans. Custodians do not qualify for same day testing, and often times custodians have had to work overtime to cover shifts of their coworkers waiting nearly a week for test results.

“We have people who are assigned to specific schools. We did hire on a few floater custodians that have come from the CARES act money,” said Pralle. “For me the big crisis is trying to have enough custodians to keep things clean and safe for schools to stay open.”

Each MSBSD high school has one custodian staffed during the day and two overnight custodians who clean each school each night. Middle schools and primary schools have only one day and one night custodian and are not covered 24 hours. Along with hand pump disinfectant sprayers, large backpack cleaning sprayers have been utilized by custodial staff.

“We use the electrostatic machine and it’s a disinfectant and we spray the classroom which that includes tables, chairs, bookshelves, cabinet handles, and pretty much everything from about shoulder height down but I’ve mostly done elementary so high schools I might go a little bit taller because they’re taller. But I would adjust, kind of hit the whole room and after that sat for about 10 minutes, we go through and clean wash those surfaces again,” said Pralle.

As MSBSD’s custodial director, Pralle attended numerous webinars put on the the Centers for Disease Control to better understand the virus and how to protect against it. With the 11,943 students out of 17,865 total taking their classes in person, Pralle and her employees are the first line of defense against the spread of coronavirus in the largest indoor gatherings that take place each weekday in the Mat-Su Valley, classrooms.

“Everybody in the school district has been working very well together,” said Pralle. “I really feel that our custodians really do take pride in what they’re doing. “They’ve stepped up to the challenge definitely.”