R-6 maintenance crew completes summer projects

SIKESTON — For Lorrie McClenton, director of building and grounds for the Sikeston R-6 School District, and her staff, maintaining the school district’s buildings is one she and her team take pride in year-round.

“Maintenance is one of those gems people don’t know what you do or what building you work at,” McClenton said. “We’re not a construction department; we maintain the buildings.”

McClenton, a secretary and nine maintenance staff members, are responsible for maintaining nine campuses including Sikeston Career and Technology Center.

“We literally touch everything in a building to make it work,” McClenton said. “We try to just keep them all up. We don’t want to just put lipstick on a pig. We try to do long-term fixes, and we fix them correctly.”

She said the R-6 maintenance crew does not provide custodial services, as some may think, but instead they work to maintain the districts buildings, focusing on roofs, floors, walls, plumbing and every piece of a building to make it work properly and efficiently.

“Every one of us have kids in the district, and we all have that Bulldog pride and take pride in our work,” McClenton said of her staff.

McClenton and her staff kept busy throughout the summer working on the following projects districtwide: mowing and landscape touch up; adding mulch to Middle School, Junior High and Alternative playgrounds; striping all parking lots; and relocating multiple furniture/inventory items between the warehouse and buildings.

She and her team completed 414 work orders from May 31-Aug. 23. Student workers also helped the maintenance department this summer, McClenton said.

In addition to the 400-plus work orders, the maintenance staff worked on the following projects by building: transportation building: painted exterior of transportation/tech/warehouse, repaired parking lot and installed ice machine; Kindergarten Center: installed rubber mulch on multiple play areas (ongoing), painted rooms C2, 4, 5, 6 and 19 and touched up hallways and upgraded the kitchen with new paint, flooring, cabinets and small appliances; Southeast Elementary: painted rooms B3, B5, library, and staff bathrooms and office door frames; Alternative Center: power-washed trailer and painted library and front office; Wing Elementary: installed tack strips and touched up paint in gym and restrooms; Lee Hunter Elementary: moved from Matthews Elementary; installed tack strips throughout building; installed installed paper towel holders, toilet paper holders, soap dispensers, classroom flag pole holders, clocks and pencil sharpeners; Middle School; painted new office for secretary; demolished the front office and added new flooring/paint to make new office area for administration and replaced boiler (water heater); Junior High: painted room 119; High School: completely emptied C Building; replaced sewer main outside of A building; replaced canopy between B and Buildings; moved into Bulldog Hall; replaced electrical panel in B Building and installed doors on restroom stalls in Band Shell; SCTC: replaced a commercial-sized HVAC air handler in culinary kitchen; and Field House/Stadium: removed all old weight equipment from Field House and practice gym for surplus auction.

“We touched a lot of furniture this year between moving out of the old buildings and into the new buildings,” McClenton said. “We also did a lot of painting around the district.”

Currently, the maintenance staff continues work to add rubber mulch districtwide, and they’re also working to get Matthews Elementary building emptied for its demolition.

McClenton said vinyl stencils for the bulldog shape for soccer and football and a football field grid were purchased and will cut down on time to prepare the field for football games because before this year, the football grid was always hand-painted.

McClenton noted summer work performed by outside vendors included adding safety vestibules with bullet resistant transaction windows at Southeast Elementary and Middle School; updating bathrooms at the Alternative Center, Field House and A building at the high school; installing new carpet in the computer room at Middle School and room G6 at Sikeston Career and Technology Center; and refinishing gym floors at Middle School, Junior High, High School and the Field House.

As the new school year is underway, other upcoming projects for the maintenance department are being finalized, McClenton said. Regardless of the project they undertake, she said her crew’s top goal is to ensure the R-6 students have the best learning environments.

“Everyone in the district is supportive of my crew,” McClenton said. “And we are good about treating them well, too, so we can keep these kids in a safe and conducive learning environment — and we go out of our way each day to make that happen.”