School custodians serve multiple roles during pandemic
NEW HAVEN — Although public schools are closed because of the pandemic, districts continue to offer daily meal pickups to families to help them better weather the chaos caused by the health crisis.
And people like Tom DeLucia and Mark Bohannon are crucial to ensuring that effort runs smoothly. They are just two of the people across the state who have not had the luxury of working safely at home as part of an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19.
DeLucia, 43, and Bohannon, 54, are longtime custodial employees for New Haven’s education system. DeLucia is building manager at the district’s central kitchen, where the student to-go meals are prepared.
“I come in in the morning. I have four truck drivers (who) deliver to all the schools,” DeLucia said. “I get all the stuff out they have to take and load onto their trucks.”
He also makes deliveries during the day when a site runs out of meals.
And DeLucia carries food supplies from the central kitchen’s storage and freezers to the on-site workers who prepare it.
“(They) give me a list of what they need for the day — 30 cases of chicken, 25 cases of vegetables. I get that ready, bring it out on the floor to them,” DeLucia said.
Bohannon is building manager at one of the meal pick-up sites, Benjamin Jepson Magnet School.
“What we basically do is get things set up for the lunch ladies,” he said. “And once they’re done, we go back, have to disinfect everything, wipe down everything (so) when they leave at night and come in in the morning, they’re good to go.”
DeLucia is also head of their roughly 100-person maintenance and custodial union, Local 287 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“My guys are working even harder than me because they have hundreds of people coming to the door of the schools,” and they need to ensure a clean, safe environment, DeLucia said.
He said it was initially a struggle to obtain a reliable supply of masks. Last week marked the first time union members were given one fresh surgical mask for each day at work.
“We’re around a lot of people,” said DeLucia. “At the beginning everybody was a nervous wreck. You didn’t know what was going on. Did you have to wear a Hazmat suit? Just gloves and a mask? ... Last week, I think they gave out three masks. The week before, one mask each person for the week.”
Bohannon for a time was showing up to work with a homemade cloth mask provided by a friend’s wife.
“They finally caught up with demand,” Bohannon said. “It was very sporadic at the beginning with masks. Gloves we always had.”
DeLucia has a wife who works from home and a teenage daughter and son, while Bohannon is single but frequently visits his siblings. Both said their biggest concern was getting infected and spreading it to their families.
“I’m the one that’s out in the open,” DeLucia said. “I don’t want to bring nothing home to them.”
Bohannon said he now feels “very comfortable coming to work” and is instead focused on when students and teachers will return to the classroom.
“The biggest challenge for me is the newness of it and not knowing what’s going on,” he said.