School custodians remain underpaid with the average hourly wage in Texas being $15.93. Districts should pay custodians more.

 Custodians make less money an hour than many middle class workers. The average hourly pay for a school custodian in Texas is $15.93 having the top pay income a year being $43,270.  According to Talent.com, the average truck driver salary in Texas is $30 per hour which nearly doubles the salary of custodian.

Custodians prevent the school from becoming dirty and make school more positive. According to MurraySchools.org, custodians are constantly working hard to keep schools clean and are one of the leading factors to the positive environment for students and staff. Examples of their help and necessity to school campuses can include them checking doors when the school has closed, unclogging toilets, or alerting staff when alarms go off. They are also constantly communicating with staff and building close relationships with administrators to keep them in the know with problems on campus. 

If schools paid custodians more, there would be more custodians leading to a cleaner and healthier school atmosphere. Indeed.com shows that top-performing employees earn salary increases to incentivize them to stay with the company and continue their career path. For example, if paid good money to do a not-so-fun job, workers would most likely do it and perform to the best of their ability to keep their job.

Some people may say the extra money that would go to custodians should be moved towards things like making the school better in some way, but not everyone sees the hard work the custodians do for the school without anyone seeing. If the custodians obtained the right amount of money they should be receiving for the amount of work they do, they would perform even better than what they would’ve done.

The solution to this problem would be for the district to up their pay by at least $3 an hour, but the money would come from donations from school events. Districts should pay custodians more.