4 ~ Friday, April 18, 1997 — North Shore News

MoneytocleanNY | |

schools redirected

By lan Noble
News Reporter

EVERYONE agrees
that North Vancouver
schools are dirtier than
they should be.

Janitors, teachers, school
board administrators, and
trustees all say the level of
cleantiness could stand
improvement.

Ata doard meeting last
week, the school board passed
a mation setting a high prion-
ty on restoring funding to
cleaning services.

With a tight budget, haw-
ever, there’s no opportunity in
sight to clean up the schaols.

In next year’s budget, main-
tenance funds have again been
used to pay for a teachers con-
tract that board chairman Guy
Heywood said the school dis-
trict can’t afford.

He said the former govern-
ment-appointed trustee Bob
Smith was able to wrangle
more than $1.5 million out of
Victoria for maintenance pur-
poses last year.

“But because he was
ordered not to touch the
sacred cow of collective agree-
ments all that money has gone
to complying with collective
agreements,” said Heywood.

CUPE Local 389 | president
Mike Hocevar said he’s frus-
trated the maintenance budget
is used to prop up other parts
of the budget.

He said Heywood’s con-
tention that moncy has to go to
sai ig agreements first is not

enough.

NV school board chairman Guy Heywood (left) and
CUPE Local 389 president Mike Hocevar disagree on
use of maintenance money.

Hocevar said janitors want a
commitment from school
board trustees that they recog-
nize that the reduction of
cleanliness has gone too far and
that a certain level of staffing
and maintenance is required.

Hocevar wants a few posi-
tions to be reinstated each year.
In March, said Hocevar, the
board climinated five janitors.

The situation has deterio-
rated so far that a parent com-
plaint about the stinky state of
washrooms at Westview cle-
mentary was, in the words of a
senior health inspector, valid.

According to North Shore
Health inspector Rick Kwan,
staff inspected Westview ele-
mentary after a parent com-
plained about the state of the
girls’ washroom.

When the washroom was
inspected Feb. 4, only one of
four sinks had soap and the
washroom was not well cleaned

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and emitted an offensive odor.

The story was much the
same in the boys’ washroom. A
strong, offensive odor grected
health inspectors, four toilets
had not been flushed, only one
sink had soap, and the floor was
“very dirty,” said Kwan.

Adequate soap and paper
towels are necessary because
hand washing is a fundamental
method of preventing disease,
said Kwan.

Inspectors made recom-
mendations that the school
replace soap dispensers with
larger ones and to thoroughly
scrub and disinfect floors to
remove the buildup of residue

- and grease.

When inspectors returned
Feb. 18, a paper towel dis-
penser had been installed in the
boys’ washroom but nothing,
else had been done.

See Health Board page 5

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