EL MONTE – Community members are noticing how El Monte City School District campuses – despite the absence of students during the extended dismissal – continue to beautify their neighborhoods with well-groomed fields, tidy exteriors and clean facilities.

That’s because with students learning remotely, District maintenance crews have jumped at the chance to intensify their cleaning, groundskeeping and repair work often delayed until summer. The team also is assisting with grab-and-go meal distribution and even delivering meals to select students whose medical challenges make it difficult for them to pick up meals.

“It’s wonderful to see how beautiful our campuses are. It’s a testament to the dedication of our maintenance crews,” Superintendent Dr. Maribel Garcia said. “But they are also doing so much more than that – they are supporting all of our teams and our community as we tackle the unique challenges posed by this health crisis.”

Maintenance and Operations Manager Gerardo Torres said his 10-member team is on a rotation as part of the social distancing effort. Typically, one gardener might handle four or five sites a week, and custodians are pressed to keep up with cleaning all campuses.

Now, two gardeners and two custodians are working on a pair of schools each day, giving them a deep scrubbing and ensuring everything looks wonderful.

“We’ve noticed the grass is a little high at schools in other communities,” Torres said. “We didn’t want our schools to look that way. In fact, some of my team members are coming in even when they are off – they want to make sure our schools reflect the best about El Monte City School District.”

Torres said some of the projects the public can’t see include repairing water line breaks underground – something they can’t tackle when students are in class.

In addition, the team sets up the four distribution sites where El Monte City School District provides four daily meals to thousands of children across the community every Monday through Friday. And on Mondays, they bring a week’s worth of meals to the homes of medically fragile students.

“This wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have a lot of guys just step up,” Torres said.

PHOTO CAPTIONS

EMCSD_Clean_1-5: El Monte City School District maintenance workers are tidying up campuses, keeping fields well groomed, handling major repairs often left until summer and supporting the grab-and-go meal distribution during the extended dismissal.