ALTON - As summer heats up, the Alton Community Unit School District #11 is focused on completing several projects before students and teachers return to the classrooms this fall.
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Eddie McCrady noted that the maintenance crew is mostly focused on basic “regular preventative maintenance,” but they are also overseeing the installation of safety vestibules in North and Gilson Brown Elementary Schools, among other projects. The goal, he emphasized, is to provide a positive school experience.
“We’re pretty busy right now,” McCrady said. “I don’t get to work with a lot of the teachers, per se, or even with the education side, but we do care about the kids on the maintenance side…You’ve got to remember everything we do is for the kids. I know that a principal might have asked or a teacher might have asked, but this all trickles down to making sure that the kids are taken care of.”
McCrady will take on the Director of Maintenance role in August after the current director, Dave McClintock, retires. McCrady has served as the foreman for the past four years, so this transition isn’t a major one, but he is excited to take on the new position.
While some people joke that he must enjoy summers off as a school district employee, McCrady always explains that summer and winter breaks are the busiest seasons for the maintenance department. They try to complete the bulk of their work when students and staff members aren’t in school.
“That’s when the kids and staff are gone, and we can knock out a lot of our bigger projects, like knocking down walls or building walls,” he explained. “That’s where our bread and butter is. When the kids and staff are gone, obviously we miss having other faces in the building. But it’s always better for the faces not to be there when we’re making huge messes like that.”
This summer, the crew is mostly focused on keeping the buildings running smoothly. The HVAC team will replace the filters in every unit in the district. They will change out the water filters for the drinking fountains and complete “a lot of in-house painting.”
Basic landscaping will take place throughout the summer. McCrady expects “some full-blown landscaping renovations” in the next few years, but in the meantime, the team will clean up existing landscaping and keep the grass low.
A few schools in the district host summer school classes, so McCrady and his team make sure the buildings are in top-notch condition for these students and teachers.
But the biggest update is the new safety vestibules in North and Gilson Brown Elementary Schools. McCrady explained that every school in the district has been outfitted with these “holding spots in between the front door and the rest of the building.”
The updates at North and Gilson Brown will include “an added barrier of protection for our staff and students.” Community members who stop by the building will be held in this space and able to talk to office staff there instead of gaining access to the entire building in their walk to the office.
This work is contracted out through a performance contracting company, and the district’s maintenance team oversees their work. McCrady is excited to complete this project and offer another layer of safety to students and staff.
The maintenance team’s work never stops, but it is sure to be a busy summer ahead. McCrady added that the maintenance department is looking for a plumber for the district.
He noted that the goal is to ensure that students and staff members have positive school experiences in the Alton School District, and he takes his role in that very seriously. The maintenance department will continue to support the district year-round with an added effort during summer break.
“One of the things that we try to do is we try to make the student experience the same at all the schools. Everybody just gets the same experience, and we’re just trying to hope that that experience is good and positive,” he added. “I am pushing this whole student experience and staff experience. I would hate for us to ever lose an employee because of something we weren’t doing or something we did do, so I try and work with our principals as much as possible and the other admin, just to make sure that we’re taking care of the staff as well as our kids.”
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