Benjamin is the Faciliities Manager at the Lab School of Washington, one of the highest rated learning disabilities schools in the country. His day is jam-packed from 7 AM to 6 PM, from overseeing student drop-off and pick-up to running the facilities team.
Transcript
>> My name is Benjamin West; I am the facilities manager at the lab school of Washington currently. I am in charge of repairs, maintenance, security, transportation and daily operations of the school. The lab school is actually a private school for kids with learning disabilities, everything from ADD/ADHD to dyslexia. We are a arts innovative school, we infuse the entire curriculum with arts, so science classes the build the internal parts of bees out of paper mache and then they assemble it all into one giant bee at the end of the semester, things along those lines. We're the number one LD school in the nation right now. On a daily basis I do everything from parking lot traffic management to student safety, moving students in between the buildings, planning evacuations, doing the daily repairs and maintenance as well as planning all the capital projects that are going to happen. I usually show up at school about 7 a.m. and I'm usually out of there by about 6 p.m. unless there is a big special event happening. So pretty much as soon as I walk in the door I've got a couple of early birds that want to let me know any issues that they say to start before the kids show up, usually by about 8:00 or so I'm out in the parking lot directing traffic, all the parents dropping off, the school buses coming through the circle as well. After that I usually get to have a sit down with my maintenance and operations team and we go over the days events and any items that are left over from the day before and then they go out to tackle their projects. From there I usually get into my office for about two or three hours, do any phone calls, e-mails, any big reports that I'm working on at the time we're working on a lot of energy management so a lot of my time goes toward that. Usually about lunch time I have an intern actually that comes from the school and works with me for about an hour and a half so we have been doing a couple different projects so he can get some hands on experience. After that I get about an hour or two to do what I need to do wherever that may be and then it's back into the parking lot for our dismissal time which is very hectic as well with all the parents and buses and students.
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