{"id":10622,"date":"2022-12-20T09:38:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T14:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=10622"},"modified":"2022-12-20T09:38:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T14:38:59","slug":"find-something-you-love-for-donnie-parker-its-working-the-nightshift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/find-something-you-love-for-donnie-parker-its-working-the-nightshift\/","title":{"rendered":"Find something you love: For Donnie Parker, it\u2019s working the nightshift"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013by David Schleck<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What keeps someone working at Virginia Beach City Public Schools for 50 years? Let Donnie Parker tell you.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always liked my job,\u201d he said. \u201cMy shop is like a second family to me. We have some extremely talented people here. I do it for them and for the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 69-year-old retires Jan. 1 as supervisor of maintenance for the Office of Maintenance Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ready to give the job up to someone younger,\u201d he said. \u201cBut leaving the people is going to be hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Kellam High School graduate, Parker\u2019s first job was as an electrician\u2019s helper in 1972, working at the school plant when it was located on Witchduck Road where Renaissance Academy now stands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started I couldn\u2019t tell you how a light switch worked,\u201d he said. \u201cI learned by on the job training.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, about 35 people worked at the plant, providing maintenance services to 33 schools. Now there\u2019s more than 80 schools with about 200 skilled trades professionals at the Office of Maintenance Services off Corporate Landing Parkway.<\/p>\n

Parker didn\u2019t have a particular interest in the trades at first. He only took the job because one of his friends worked in the electrical shop.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy plan was to come here for a year, just to get some experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But he learned quick. He became a master electrician and then a supervisor of the plant\u2019s first night shift in 1998. He oversees 21 staff members who specialize in electrical, plumbing, HVAC and other skills necessary to maintain and fix nearly everything that can break during an after-hours school emergency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be that when the school day was over, people went home,\u201d Parker said. \u201cNot now. People are in the schools all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to student activities before and after school, custodians and security officers work around the clock.<\/p>\n

There are 10 different shops within the Maintenance Services building, responsible for taking care of the division\u2019s 11.5 million square feet of building space. The building stores supplies such as sheetrock, plywood, ceiling tile, HVAC parts and filters \u2026 many, many filters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are literally tens of thousands of air filters throughout the division that need to be changed every three months,\u201d Parker said. His team does preventative maintenance to keep the schools various systems operating, but things still break down during nightshift hours, 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Pipes burst. Toilets leak.<\/p>\n

Parker had the opportunity to make more money working for utility companies, but he had heard too many stories of people being laid off from private sector jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a very secure job for a man with a family,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to his work at the shop, he taught several years in the division\u2019s career development and technical programs.<\/p>\n

When a colleague is going through a crisis at home, Parker\u2019s team members take up collection and attend memorial services. \u201cWe come together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The top challenge over the years was supplying the manpower to keep everything running in the schools, including aging equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love my job. I\u2019ve always loved my job, but I\u2019m ready to give it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In his retirement, Parker plans to spend more time with his dog, Bella, and pursue hobbies such as art and antique collecting, and paranormal investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will stay very busy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He has some words of wisdom to share after 50 years at VBCPS.<\/p>\n

\u201cFind what you like and stick with it,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t like your job, you will always be miserable. I\u2019m about to turn 69, and I don\u2019t regret one moment here. I\u2019ve made friendships that I know will last a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2013by David Schleck What keeps someone working at Virginia Beach City Public Schools for 50 years? Let Donnie Parker tell you. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked my job,\u201d he said. \u201cMy shop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10622"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10628,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions\/10628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}