It’s the end of an uncharacteristically cold school day in late March. Snowflakes are falling outside, and huddled into a training room are about a dozen School Plant employees – some still bundled in thick winter coats, others proudly bearing their School Plant polo shirts.

This is not a service call.

The buildings are heated. The schools are operating fine.

That work was taken care of.

This meeting is more nostalgic in nature. At the end of this school year, 17 members of the School Plant workforce will have logged more than 30 years with the division. Combined, they share more than 582 years spent with Virginia Beach Schools.

Leading among them is Allen Johnson, a plumbing supervisor who has racked up 46 years with the division.

“He went from outdoor to indoor plumbing,” joked Dennis Middleton, the second most veteran School Plant employee, with 40 years under his belt.

Sitting around the table with these long-time employees, it becomes clear just how far VBCPS has come in the past three (or four) decades.

Back when Johnson was just a rookie, there were 52 schools in the division. Today, it boasts 85. Not only were they fewer in number, but schools then lacked some of today’s most basic features: computers, air conditioning, even a landscaping crew.

“I remember when I first started,” said Kenneth Whitney, a general maintenance craftsman with 36 years in, “when the grass started growing in the summer, they came to every shop and would take a couple of people to go cut grass.”

Times were just different.

Asked about their first contracts, the range of salaries varied from $3,800 – $5,800 a year. And, those paychecks were doled out just once a month at the division’s Credit Union.

At that time, there were 14-15 people working in School Plant; today there are more than 170.

The workforce has grown, but so, too, have the tools – both in number and in capability. Today, craftsmen can remote into the grid of school’s HVAC system to solve problems in a building’s air conditioning unit.

They can literally fix an issue without ever having to be in the building.

Although, that, they say is more in line with their role than anything else: School Plant has always been the invisible force keeping the schools together.

“It’s never seen – in a way,” Johnson said. “(Schools) put in a request and, the next day, it’s fixed.”

“They sneak around at all hours of the night,” said Brian Baxter, director of School Plant. “They sneak around on weekends and they work all to make instruction possible. That’s the pride of this building, I think, it’s ‘Whatever it takes.’”

For the time the group met, stories and laughs from previous years filled the air. Try asking the group to name all the superintendents they worked for and you will get a recent history of names – Merrill, Magula, Jenney – and then a collective silence.

“We went through a pile of them at one time,” Johnson cracks.

Yet, when the conversation turned to the future of School Plant, the room took a more somber turn. These workers who have devoted their careers to keeping school buildings running say there may soon come a time when there is no one to pass the baton to. They believe their fields are being overlooked by this generation of students who fail to see the job opportunities or benefits of the work.

“There’s always going to be electricity. There’s always going to be plumbing,” Johnson said. “There’s always going to be heating and air conditioning. All the trades are always going to be here, but there’s a shortage of trained craftsmen.”

To help answer that shortage, the department works with schools to attend field days and career days as well as partners with the Advanced Technology Center and the Center for Career and Technical Education. They show today’s students the work and the opportunities available to them right here in Virginia Beach Schools.

“It gives students nowadays a good foundation to really get back into the working world and learn a trade,” said Jerry Hutchison, a HVAC specialist for 37 years.

It also helps ensure the quality reputation School Plant has built will continue on.

“The intrinsic knowledge this group has, you can never replace,” Baxter said. “The teachers are the front lines (of today’s classroom), no question, but then these guys are the backbone.”

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