By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
After about a year on the job, Caleb Bailey said he’s led charges to make Rockingham County schools safer.
From buying a new, centralized security camera system, which will be installed in the coming weeks, to implementing a safety reporting and alert app, Bailey said his primary goal has been to streamline safety operations county-wide.
“I wanted to make sure that we’re consistent as a division,” Bailey said Monday evening during his first annual report to the Rockingham County School Board. “Each school, we were getting all the boxes checked. There was nothing that we weren’t doing. The key is that with my position, we were able to bring some things together and do it as one division … We want to standardize how we act.”
Now, Bailey said he wants to focus on safety drills for faculty and staff to prepare for active shooter emergencies. A grant from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management will help run a “full-scale” drill next spring.
The operation won’t involve students but will create an opportunity for teachers and administrators to practice safety procedures alongside emergency services, like local police, in real time.
That’s the value of emergency management, Bailey said: the planning and building of relationships before an incident ever happens.
District looks at private contract for custodial staff
After 38% turnover among county schools’ custodial staff during the 2024-25 academic year, school board members are considering contracting that work out through a recruiting agency called AtWork.
If board members approve the deal, AtWork, a national company with a local office, will recruit and hire employees to complete custodial work in Rockingham County schools. AtWork, as the official employer, would cover all payroll, taxes, insurance and other benefits.
Anyone hired through AtWork would still be subject to the same policies, discipline and background checks as any other school employee.
“Since they are dealing with our students and our schools, we want to keep the same standards that we do with all of our hiring that we do now,” said Amy Painter, the assistant superintendent of personnel and compliance.
After 90 days, if all goes well, an employee can choose to become a full RCPS employee or stay under AtWork.
Board members said they hope AtWork’s weekly pay structure can help attract more candidates to those jobs.
“The payscale that they’re in, they’re $15 to $20 an hour on average, getting paid monthly is kind of really painful,” said Frank McMillan, who owns the Harrisonburg branch of AtWork. “It would be beneficial, if the payscale is the same, for them to stay on our payroll because they get paid weekly.”
Keeping contractors on AtWork’s payroll could also save the school district around 25% on its cleaning staff expenses because it wouldn’t have to pay as much in health insurance and retirement benefits.
AtWork would be paid through a fee added on top of each employee’s pay rate, though the board didn’t publicly discuss what those fees could amount to.
Currently, 15 custodial positions across the school district are vacant.
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