Lights – Check. Bathrooms – Check. Floors – Check. Cafeteria – Check. Custodian Julia Cuellar goes through her long list of things to do for the day. Every day she has responsibilities before, during and after school, and she is just one of many custodians who keep the school clean.

The week of Oct. 7-11 is custodian appreciation week. Leander ISD sets aside this week to appreciate custodians in our district. Spanish teacher Rhonda Bynell said custodians do a really wonderful job, and she is grateful for the work they put in every day.

“They clean student bathrooms all day long and there’s a lot of work,” Bynell said. “They clean the break rooms, they clean teachers rooms, they help with cafeteria work, etcetera, so it’s a lot.”

Bynell said that if the custodians didn’t do what they did, the school would be very dirty. In addition to the responsibilities Bynell listed, Cuellar said she does even more to keep the school clean.

“Every morning before school I turn on all the lights and go to the library to clean the floor,” Cuellar said. “Then, I clean the bathrooms of the fieldhouse. After that I go to the cafeteria to clean it for lunch. I clean the windows, check the trash, check the bathrooms to make sure they have toilet paper, and clean them. Then I make sure the cafeteria is ready for [first] lunch. Lunch ends, and I clean up the trash from the courtyard and get ready for second lunch. Then I look over the bathrooms again, I clean the cafeteria again, take the trash out, and get the cafeteria ready for the next day.”

With all of this on the custodian’s plates, students and teachers can help them out with their jobs. Junior Carson Liddiard said he wants to be more helpful and supportive of the custodians.

“We [should] try to be more careful about making messes and try to be better about cleaning up after ourselves,” Liddiard said. “Since they do so much for our school, we should try to help them by not making them clean our messes.”

Although Liddiard believes that students and teacher’s help can be beneficial to the custodians, there are still many responsibilities that they have. However, Cuellar said she loves her job despite all the difficulties.

“I like all parts of the job, I can’t choose one over the other,” Cuellar said. “I like to work, I like the students, the kids, I like the school, I like everything. Everyone is so nice. It makes me happy that they can come to a clean school.”

Cuellar said she feels welcome, but Bynell said there are more things students and staff can do to show their appreciation.

“I think we could support them and show them appreciation all year long,” Bynell said. “Whenever you see them, say thank you for what you do.”