Principal forced to address broken appliances himself to conserve money

The slow process to fix items around the school seems to be a common complaint, but students actually reporting maintenance issues is a rarity, and so they resort to just sticking signs on broken lights or toilets.
Principal Jeff Litz said that as a result of the economy crash in 2007, the maintenance department’s size has decreased significantly. One of the facility supervisors even said he used to manage 18 people, but he now only manages six.
“The county has significantly less plumbers and technicians than they used to, and so it takes longer to get stuff fixed,” Litz said.
Though this factor does contribute to how extensive the fixing process is, the county can only fix items once they receive a report.
Technically, it is not a part of a custodian’s job description to walk around the school looking for things to fix.
According to a poll of 100 students, only four percent said they have reported a maintenance issue to a custodian or administrator.
If a student were to see a broken toilet or sink, operating engineer Jaime Bagtas said it is more efficient to immediately report the issue to a custodian or administrator for inspection. But the report can take several months to even reach FCPS maintenance.
“In the back of my classroom, there is a light that does not turn on, and there are two signs on it,” English teacher Matthew Horne said. “One that says ‘this light does not working’, and then there’s a second one that says ‘doesn’t not work, it’s a bad.’ The date on it is ‘1/17/2014’, which is almost as long as I’ve been in this room, and it hasn’t been fixed. It’s been identified as a problem, but hasn’t been changed.”
Hiring a professional to come and fix items around the school is not only a long process, but is also quite costly. Instead of paying someone to fix or hang something up, Litz said he will often repair items or complete tasks around the school himself in order to save money.
“If I want to get a SMART Board hung up in the building, the normal process is, there’s a way that I put in a form to get an estimate for someone to come out and do that, and it’s usually a couple hundred dollars,” Litz said. “Rather than spending money to do that, I’ll just hang it myself because it saves money.”