Following their return from winter break, students may have seen several new faces sweeping the halls. This sight is not of just a couple new custodial members; instead, the entire custodial staff has been replaced.
Before winter break, the custodial company ServiceMaster discontinued its contract with the subcontracting custodial company that hired the previous set of custodial staff members. ServiceMaster then sent its employees directly to the school instead of through a subcontractor in the new custodial arrangement.
“On [Feb.] 4th [we will have been here] one month,” Marshall Garmon said.
Garmon is the supervisor of the new group of custodial staff and has worked in the custodial industry for 15 years. However, she also has previous career experience as both a beautician and a Certified Nursing Assistant.
“Actually, I started out as a beautician at 17; I did that for like 30 years,” Garmon said. “[I also worked as] a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant), [but] I left that as I got too attached to my patients. Then, I was sitting at home, and my cousin called me and told me ‘You need to go take some ID and go to the Board of Education,’ and I said ‘For what?’ He said ‘For a job,’ and well that was 15 years ago.”
Garmon was previously stationed at Kirby High School, where she worked for 15 years. Garmon and her team hope to uplift White Station’s cleanliness to the level that Garmon maintained while at Kirby High School.
“We really need a chance to bring the school up to where it’s supposed to be,” Garmon said. “The school I came from was very clean. Very clean.”
Although Garmon and her team are still in the process of getting used to the layout of White campus; their experience is similar to White Station’s freshman class taking a couple months to get used to the building and the best routing to get to different locations.
“We got to get the feel of the building because it’s huge,” Garmon said. “We are finally learning the building, and once we learn the building, our summer work will really show what we do.”
Once the custodial team understands the arrangement of the White Station campus, they plan to complete a major beautification of the school over the summer. While many students may feel saddened by the loss of so many veteran custodial staff at White Station, the new team hopes to make the school cleaner than ever before.
“Like I said, no offense to the other company, but I know clean because I’ve been in this business a long time,” Garmon said. “And I know clean when I see clean, [and] I know what I had to do when I got here. You’ll see a big difference this summer.”
Naturally, being transferred to a new school involves meeting many new staff members and students. Though few students get the chance to interact with the new custodial staff while they are rushing to their classes, many of the custodial staff members appreciate interactions with students.
“What stands out as pretty good to me [is that] I’ve had a group of students walk up to me and tell me that they appreciate us and thanked us for cleaning their school,” Garmon said. “Yes, the children [were warm to us]. They see how we do things and they even help out sometimes.”
Despite the challenges Garmon and her team face given their transfer to a new school and new layout, Garmon has one response:
“I welcome myself to White Station High School, yes I do,” Garmon said.
