Staff Feature: Juan Quezada
Sammy Meskill ’29
Standing at a modest 5’7”, Juan Quezada, one of the people who maintains BHSECM’s home, is very welcoming and kind. Greeting me with a bright smile on his face, he answered all of my questions with great enthusiasm. In maintaining an originally commercially used and very old building, a lot of hard work is needed. Juan has a seven-year-old daughter which is where he gets his passion for his tough job — he wants her to have a clean space to learn and wants to provide that for BHSECM students too. With all of the recent changes relating to school policy, I thought it would be interesting to sit down and talk to the person who manages the building that over 600 students and staff walk through each day.
After the recent vandalism of the bathrooms — anti-Jewish and Black messages were written — a new bathroom policy was instated. The process to go to the bathroom was long and aggravating — you had to find a school aide to unlock the door for you (all bathrooms were locked), a hard thing to do at times. And, an inspection of the bathroom is done after you leave. The policy was lifted at the start of the spring semester, though Principal Pew maintains that if more vandalism occurs it will be reinstated.
Besides the racist vandalism, people have vandalized the bathrooms in other ways — throwing toilet paper on the wall, throwing things in drains, and not going to the bathroom where they’re supposed to. Someone who helps erase the effects of these acts of vandalism is Juan. Now 33 years old, Juan has been working in his field since he was 15! In his four years of working at the building, Juan has had to help with fixing a lot of problems, the craziest of which was the elevator catching fire.
Juan is considered to be a “fireman” or “helper,” though he does most of the work in the building. He works with many people for his job, including his boss — the engineering supervisor — and DOE specialists when the need for them arises.
I asked Juan to walk me through his day — the people, messes, and things he comes across. Coming from the Citifield area in Queens, Juan wakes up at 3 in the morning. He bikes to 525 East Houston, arriving between 4:30 and 4:45 AM. His shift, starting at 5 AM, begins with a check of the entire school. He first makes sure that boilers and pipes (which could burst in the winter) are working. Though fire drills are a rare occurrence for students, Juan checks the fire alarm system every morning. He then consults his DOE-given book, an instruction manual which tells Juan what to do before students come to school, to check he has done everything correctly.
Throughout the day, he is called to different places as problems arise. It could be an urgent message from the principal, or a big spill in the main office. Juan is always busy — one person caring for more than 600 others. Juan talked about feeling responsible for everyone in the building, describing himself as one of the “first responders.” He makes sure the courtyard is doing well, takes out trash, monitors the cafeteria and makes sure that everything is clean and running smoothly.
Juan is relieved at 4 PM every day by two cleaners, Tyrone and Josh. Both cleaners are assigned 2.5 floors to clean. When asked about how messes in the bathrooms affect their jobs, Juan said it’s a hassle to disinfect and clean everything. Though each mess only adds 15 minutes of cleaning, the frequency and amount of them does make their jobs harder. Juan said it “broke his heart” and that the messes “are unfair to the kids and everyone in the building.” He wants people to think of the building as their home and not treat it in this way. A message he would give students is that “they are not the only people in the building.” He wants people to realize that their actions have repercussions and consequences, and that hopefully that will discourage people from harming the building and in doing so, the other people around them.