Maya McFadden photo
Bohannon, on the job 27 years and counting: "I make myself available to make the ship run smooth."
Kindergarteners greeted Benjamin Jepson Building Manager Mark Bohannon with hugs and fist bumps as the school’s top custodian prepared to escort them from the gym to their classrooms — as part of a daily morning ritual that goes well beyond taking out the trash.
But it includes plenty of that, too.
Bohannon made that gym-to-classroom trip at around 9 a.m. Thursday, hours after he first arrived at the 15 Lexington Ave., PreK‑8 public school as the sun came up to start his work day.
It represented just one of many ways that Bohannon has integrated himself into the east-side school’s community, doing what he can to support students and teachers have a warm, welcoming, safe, and clean place to study and work.
“Everyone comes to me,” Bohannon said with pride of students and staff. “I make myself available to make the ship run smooth.”
This marks the 27th year that Bohannon has worked doing building maintenance for the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district.
He begins each day on the job by checking the school grounds and turning on lights throughout the building. Some of his other daily tasks include cleaning up during and after four lunch waves and collecting lunch waste from classrooms, deep cleaning the cafeteria, cleaning up the school kitchen by taking out its trash and mopping, and, at the end, dumping all trash in the dumpster.
Amid all of that, Bohannon receives regular requests each day to unclog toilets and clean up classroom spills.
By the end of most work days, Bohannon said, his phone tracks that he’s walked seven to eight miles.
“He’s a part of the community and it’s not just a job to him,” local custodians union President Tom DeLucia told the Independent about Bohannon. “The kids, teachers, and principal love him, and that’s what we want as a union.”
DeLucia said he and others learn from Bohannon’s experience, and that he sets an example for the rest of the district’s custodial team. He’s also a prime example of why DeLucia and custodial union members have been urging NHPS to rid itself of private management companies and outside contractors and to phase its union supervisors back in, amid broader struggles districtwide with school building upkeep.
“These are the kind of people you want in schools, we have a lot of them. People that care about what’s going on in their community,” DeLucia said. “It’s people like Mark that could be supervising because he has the experience and is part of the community.
"If I Can Do It & Help, I Will"
Bohannon escorts kindergarteners to class Thursday, as he does every morning.
Bohannon’s now daily morning routine of offering a warm welcome to Jepson’s kindergarteners began when school staff and students returned in person amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In recent years he’s taken on the role of offering a daily reminder to elementary students that all school staffers are there for support — including the custodial team.
As Bohannon walked on Thursday, the group of 20 students filed in a line through the hallways. He got updates from some about how their school days had gone earlier in the week. From others he heard ruminations about the onset of winter weather. “I feel like an iceberg,” one student told Bohannon.
“Yeah it’s getting pretty cold out there now, just make sure you stay bundled up,” he responded.
Bohannon waited with the kindergarten students for a few minutes outside their classrooms to give their teachers time to gather their breakfasts.
While waiting, he asked one student, “You’re behaving today, right? And keeping your hands to yourself?” The student nodded then hugged Bohannon.
Bohannon told this reporter that making a school work “takes a village” — of teachers and students and parents and, yes, custodial staffers like himself.
Just as he aims to help his building’s educators by walking students to class, other staffers also help him by sweeping and cleaning their classrooms at the end of the day.
Bohannon said he’s found a home at Jepson, where he has been working since 2011. Custodial work was a second career for Bohannon; he previously managed an auto parts shop until 1997.
Since then he’s spent each morning preparing schools like Jepson starting at around 6:30 a.m. After getting the school building prepped, Bohannon spends between 7:30 and 9 a.m., before students begin arriving, doing classroom projects requested by educators. He said those include replacing projector parts, putting tables together, and moving around bookcases.
Some tasks he takes on are due to school shortages in IT support and because he believes “if I can do it and help, I will.”
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Bohannon gets help from a part-time custodial worker to keep the Fair Haven Heights building running.
Throughout Thursday morning, Bohannon not only replaced several trash bags in classrooms to rid them of breakfast waste, but also constantly offered students reminders in the hallways to get off phones, get to class, and to “make the right choices.”
He added that the rapport he’s built with students has helped significantly when it comes to messes caused by student behavior. The students’ respect for and relationships with Bohannon have caused students to think twice before trashing bathrooms or purposefully spilling drinks.
Throughout the morning Bohannon picked up an empty spray bottle to fill with cleaning solution and deliver back to a teacher’s classroom.
Around 9:30 a.m., Bohannon grabbed a roll of clear plastic trash bags, placed them in his back pocket, and stopped on each floor to collect waste from classrooms. He also checked in with the school’s lunch staff who prepped sandwiches for lunch and unlocked bathrooms for students.
“Why is everyone in hallway? Find a home guys,” he called out on the first floor.
“You OK?” he asked one student. “Why is your phone out?” he asked another student while rolling trash bins through the hallway.
As Bohannon passed classrooms, students waved at him, calling out “Hi, Mr. Mark!”
When one student asked him “Why do you have to take all this garbage?” Bohannon responded, “Because if it stays here it will start to get smelly and you don’t want to learn like that.”
“Mark is an invaluable member of the Jepson community,” Benjamin Jepson Principal Lesley Stancarone told the Independent. “He takes time out of his day to greet all of our students and families as they arrive in the morning. He knows every child by name and routinely goes out of his way to walk a student to class, make sure they have breakfast, and offer support whenever needed. Mark works tirelessly to ensure our building is clean, in working order, and safe. He is an asset to the entire Jepson family.”
When asked about the challenges that come with his job, Bohannon said the district’s private facilities management company “makes things harder than they should be” and said there are larger issues with the lack of funding set aside for school facilities. He noted his school could use new paint in the hallways to make spaces look better maintained. It would also help if his floor cleaning machine wasn’t over 20 years old and needed constant upkeep from himself.
He said some machinery that’s meant for daily cleaning have been out of service since June and noted that many work orders are not addressed in a timely manner by management. “My floors could be a lot better, but we’re down a machine,” he said.
He concluded that the students are what keep him coming to work daily. As a New Haven native who grew up in Fair Haven, Bohannon said he believes a properly maintained environment brings more student respect to school spaces.
