Walking through the halls of ELHS, you might’ve passed by unfamiliar faces or taken a glance at certain members of the staff and not recognized them and wondered what these individuals do. It’s hard to guess that some of them would be overlooked, despite their importance.
Billy Hastings, the Director of Facilities and Operations, has worked in custodial maintenance for 31 years. He started at Haslett, fresh out of the army, washing dishes. After working his way up to custodian, groundsman, then a maintenance man, Hastings has since retired from Haslett and has been at East Lansing for five years.
Now, Hastings’ responsibilities include custodial maintenance, grounds, construction, boiler inspections, fire inspection and overall safety for all of the students in the school.
“I feel that my job directly impacts the school in the way that it makes it a clean, safe environment for young people to learn in,” Hastings said. “It also provides security, by locking doors. My team’s job is to provide a safe place for you to learn that’s always clean and always safe.”
But it’s not just Hastings. The team he leads plays a major role in the ELHS environment as a whole.
“There are the line fields and then they get help from the maintenance people periodically, and custodians, those three main folks do all that work,” Hastings said. “It’s not me, it’s my team, just like in sports, just like in anything. It’s us as a community.”
Vince Watson, who is the custodial supervisor, is in charge of the entirety of the custodial staff across the entire district.
“I have over 30 people and 800,000 square feet that have to be cleaned,” Watson said. “I have to make the decision, how many people are here, what time they come in and when they go home, not only for the high school, but the middle school and six elementary schools as well.”
Watson’s goal for his career is to level himself up to Hastings position. While Watson is taking classes at Michigan School Business Officials, both he and Hastings agree that experience is everything.
“There’s no way to really learn these jobs unless you do them,” Hastings said . “It’s something new all the time.If you don’t have hands-on experience, it’s really difficult to be a director in these jobs, because you have to actually know what to do, and what to ask people to do.”
Balancing custodial maintenance across eight schools and getting ready for the next step in your career isn’t easy. Because of this Watson is grateful to have a mentor like Hastings.
“He’s very humble, but he’s so knowledgeable in everything,” Watson said. “He’s a great person to learn from. I’m learning every day. He plays a huge role in this district and how operations are run.”
As humble as Hastings is, he noted that his reason for staying is not about what he did today, yesterday or even 40 years ago.
“And I can say this, about everything from the superintendent to any teacher or anybody I’ve ever met that works here, anybody in the food service to the guys on the loading dock taking the food to the kids,” Hastings said. “It’s all about you guys.”
