Cleaning up our Schools

News 12 recently ran a story on Dr. Dana Bedden, the new Superintendent, being disappointed in the cleanliness of some of the Richmond County Schools. He specifically mentioned Butler High School and Langford Middle School as those that will be cleaned within the next two weeks.

Call me old-fashioned, but I have an idea. Butler has 1155 pupils, Langford has 705. That's a lot of cleaner's helpers.

When I went to high school, one of my jobs was to clean up the auditorium daily. That's where our study halls were held. Hundreds of students passed through there a day. After school I would take a large dust mop and clean the floor. I'd make sure all the auditorium seats were in the upright position. It didn't take that long, and as I recall, I was paid $1 a day.

That wasn't my first janitorial experience. When I was six years old, I began helping our church custodian straighten up the sanctuary on Saturday mornings. I didn't do a whole lot, just making sure all the hymnals were in the proper position in the pews, and matching up the hymn numbers to the hymnboard at the front of the church. Yet all of that taught a young boy a sense of responsibility, and I remember that experience to this day.

Surely there has to be some type of account, where it's district money or PTO money, that could encourage young people to do something similar these days. There are over 1000 students at Butler, over 700 at Langford. I would imagine some of them would appreciate a little money to spend by helping out their schools. The sense of pride and the work ethic learned may well last a long time. It has to be worth a try.

Tom Campbell