Recently Centennial has been short staffed in the custodial department, but the problem is not just the at the high school. Budget cuts all over have made things more difficult for the staff, district, and students involved with extracurricular activities.

Assistant Principal Mark Porterfield, he says that it’s also a problem at Centennial Middle School and elementary schools in the county. Porterfield admitted that CHS needs more custodians but ever since the economic crash in 2007-08, it’s been hard to find the funding. The school’s budget can only have so much in it, even though he says hopefully they can get more money into it. The problem isn’t that staff is getting laid off, but supposedly because a lot of staff are switching to different schools or off to other things.

Since the custodians haven’t been able to clean individual rooms for a while now, some teachers have taken it into their own hands to keep their classroom clean. It can get the job done faster and easier, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. However for some teachers, they’re used to it.

“With what they have, they do good,” says English teacher Eli Nolde, who’s worked at Centennial for nine years. He says that they will still empty the garbage, but don’t have time to vacuum or really anything else. Nolde has also banned food and drinks from four of his periods because he doesn’t want to be the one to pick things up. The reason he picks things up besides helping out the custodians, but also because he likes to “keep my environment comfortable.”