Greenwich Village Gazette

By Donna Lamb

On Fri., June 12, school cleaners with SEIU Local 32BJ, their advocates and several members of the New York City Council took to the steps of City Hall to urge Mayor Bloomberg to halt the proposed $6.9 million budget cuts that could jeopardize school children’s health and safety.

Hector Figueroa (right), Secretary Treasurer of 32BJ, which represents the 5,000 New York City public school cleaners, pointed out that it was the public school cleaners who sanitized schools after the recent swine flu outbreak. "We can’t expect our schools to stay clean and healthy if no one is there to clean them," he declared. "The proposed budget cuts would take away jobs and negatively impact the cleanliness of our public schools."

Other speakers noted that the cleaners are already working through shortages of staff and supplies brought on by ten years of continued budget cuts. "We’re doing our best to clean the schools with the little bit of manpower and materials we have," said Francisco Vanenburg, a school cleaner in Manhattan. "If we’re cut any deeper we won’t be able to manage." James Whiteman, who has worked at PS 149 for twenty years, observed that some of the cleaners have already been cut to part-time workers "and if you cut us any further, we will be no-time workers. We will be without jobs and the children will be without a clean environment."

Among the councilmembers who came to voice their opposition to the cuts was Council Member Mathieu Eugene (right), member of the City Council Committee on Health. "The children are our City’s future, and we have a moral responsibility to provide them with a school environment that is clean, safe and contributes to learning," he stated. "Especially with the H1N1 flu that caused the closure of several schools throughout the city, these cleaners are on the front line of protecting the safety and health of our children. We must join together and tell the Mayor, ‘No more cuts to school cleaners!’"

Council Member Bill de Blasio (right), chair of the council’s General Welfare Committee, spoke as both an elected official and a worried parent of children in the public schools. Brandishing a bottle of hand sanitizer, he said that the Health Department has informed people that the best way to protect children is to get them to use hand sanitizer. "But the administration won't put it in the classrooms for our children to use throughout the day," he continued. "The custodians are ready, willing and able to do it, and we have to protect them so they will be there to protect our kids."

Council Member Julissa Ferreras, a former beacon school director, emphasized that, as she had witnessed firsthand, what the school cleaners do is way beyond just tidying up. "When a child gets sick in the classroom, they clean up the mess," she declared. "When we elected officials hold events in the public schools, these men and women clean up after us. We need to understand this right now: they do our dirty work, and we cannot let the mayor do dirty work on them."

Photos by Donna Lamb

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