How to Hire School Facilities Staff When Every Trade Is Short-Handed

Here is a staffing problem that doesn't make the headlines but quietly breaks school buildings every year:

A district has three custodial vacancies going into fall. Two of the open positions have been posted since July. One is a second shift role at a middle school that's been empty for 11 months. Classrooms aren't being cleaned on the same cycle they used to be. The remaining custodians are covering extra square footage. Deferred maintenance is stacking up because there aren't enough hands to do reactive cleaning, let alone proactive upkeep.

And somewhere in the same metro area, a distribution center is hiring at a few dollars more per hour, and a commercial cleaning company is offering evening hours that don't require being on campus at dismissal, both having an application that takes seven minutes on a phone.

This is the facilities staffing problem most K-12 leaders are living with and not talking about publicly. Let's talk about it.

What Changed, and Why It Matters

School custodial and maintenance work used to be among the more stable options for workers without a four-year degree. Good benefits, predictable schedule, job security, a connection to the community. In many districts, custodians stayed for 15 or 20 years. Turnover was low enough that recruiting was almost an afterthought.

That description doesn't fit most districts anymore.

The facilities worker candidate pool has been redistributed across an economy where some employers now pay more for similar physical work, and others compete on flexibility and speed. Amazon distribution centers and private building-maintenance firms for apartment complexes and office buildings often pay above what districts offer. Commercial cleaning contractors frequently don't pay more, but they hire faster and offer schedules that feel more flexible. All of these employers are recruiting the same population that used to default to school district jobs.

What's changed isn't that school facilities work became worse. The physical demands are similar. The skills required are comparable. In many cases, the benefits are still superior. What changed is that workers now have visible, easy-to-access alternatives, and they're using them.

The pandemic accelerated this in a specific way: it gave many facilities workers their first experience with commercial or private sector cleaning and building services work, and a significant portion of them decided they preferred it. Not because the work was better, but because the hiring process was faster, the communication was clearer, and the schedule felt more within their control.

Why School Facilities Roles Are Harder to Fill Than They Should Be

Beyond the competitive wage landscape, there are a few specific friction points that school districts are creating for themselves:

The job description doesn't reflect the actual role. Most school custodian job postings were written by HR generalists or copied from a template and haven't been updated in years. They're full of liability language, outdated equipment references, and generic physical requirements. They don't tell a candidate what a realistic day looks like, what the team is like, what the schedule actually is, or what makes this building a good place to work. A commercial cleaning company's job posting often does all of those things. Yours probably doesn't.

The pay isn't positioned correctly. Many school districts offer total compensation packages that are genuinely competitive when you factor in pension contributions, health insurance, and paid time off. But the job posting says "$17.50/hour," and the competing employer says "$20/hour." The candidate who doesn't calculate total compensation, which is most candidates, makes the obvious choice. You're losing the framing battle before the conversation starts.

The application process is built for the district, not the candidate. Online application portals designed for professional positions frequently require the same process for a custodial hire as for a director. Uploading documents, creating accounts, filling out multi-page forms. For a candidate who's applying from their phone on a lunch break, this is the moment they close the tab.

There's no sense of urgency in how vacancies are filled. In some districts, a custodial vacancy goes through the same approval chain as a teaching position. It sits for two weeks before posting, then another two weeks in the queue. By the time someone reaches out to a qualified candidate, that person has been working their new commercial cleaning job for three weeks.

What Actually Works for Facilities Recruiting

Separate your value proposition from your competitors' hourly rate. You're not going to win a wage war with commercial employers in most markets. But you have things commercial employers don't: a pension, PTO, health benefits that are frequently better than private sector alternatives, a consistent schedule tied to a school calendar, and a meaningful place in a community institution. Say that clearly. "Work at the same school your kids attend" is a better headline for a custodian job posting than "Performs custodial duties in accordance with district standards."

Target the right candidate populations actively. Custodial and maintenance candidates are reachable through specific channels: local Facebook community groups, Nextdoor, community boards at laundromats and libraries, Spanish-language community pages, trade program alumni networks at community colleges, and workforce development programs. Active outreach to these populations, including through community members who already work in your district, changes your pipeline.

Simplify the initial application to the point where it takes under five minutes. Name, contact, availability, relevant experience (prior cleaning, maintenance, or similar work). That's the first step. The rest comes after a conversation. If someone has to create a login and upload three documents before a human being has spoken to them, you're eliminating your best candidates along with your worst ones.

Build in same-day or next-day outreach. Facilities candidates are in a market where fast-moving employers win. If someone applies for your custodian position on a Monday, your team should be calling or texting them by Tuesday. Not to complete the hire, but to say, "We got your application, we're interested, let's talk." That single touchpoint puts you ahead of most of the competition.

Use employee referrals deliberately. Your existing custodial and maintenance staff know people. They have friends, family members, neighbors who might be looking for work. Referral programs, even informal ones where you thank an employee when someone they referred gets hired, consistently produce your best candidates. People refer people they'd want to work with. And someone who came in through a referral typically onboards faster and stays longer.

The Skilled Trades Problem Within Facilities

Maintenance and operations roles — HVAC, electrical, plumbing, general skilled trades — are a harder problem than custodial. These skills take years to develop, and the private sector competes aggressively for them.

A licensed electrician who works for your district is making a real sacrifice in earnings potential compared to what a private electrical firm would pay. The "why" for that choice has to be explicit and genuine: the schedule, the predictability, the benefits, the community connection. If your district isn't having that conversation directly with candidates and actively reinforcing it with current employees, you're relying on inertia, and inertia is running out.

A few things that work specifically for skilled trades recruiting in schools: apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship partnerships with vo-tech programs and community colleges, clear internal career ladders so someone hired as a general maintenance technician can see a path to facilities manager, and wage parity conversations that are honest about where the district is competitive and where it isn't.

You don't have to be the highest-paying employer. You do have to be an honest one.

Retention: The Part Where Most Districts Drop the Ball

A school custodian who's been at the same building for 10 years is irreplaceable in a real sense. They know where every shut-off valve is, which classroom windows leak when it rains hard, what the substitute teacher schedule means for gym floor usage. That institutional knowledge doesn't transfer.

Yet many districts don't treat facilities retention as a strategic priority. There's no structured check-in process for maintenance workers. There's no formal recognition when a building has had zero custodial vacancies for two years. There's no pathway conversation.

The most common reason good custodial staff leave mid-career isn't pay. It's feeling invisible. They work overnight or early morning shifts. They're gone before most of the building arrives. Their work is noticed only when something goes wrong.

Deliberate, simple recognition, a principal who takes two minutes to acknowledge a custodian's work, a facilities manager who checks in regularly on job satisfaction, a small crew celebration when a building passes inspection changes that dynamic. It costs almost nothing, and it changes retention meaningfully.

The Bottom Line

Facilities staffing in K-12 is a solvable problem. It's not easy, and it requires a genuine commitment to changing the way your district approaches recruiting and candidate experience. But the districts that treat facilities hiring with the same strategic seriousness as teacher hiring are seeing dramatically better results.

The gig economy and private sector aren't going away. The trust gap in public institutions isn't going to close itself. What you can control is how easy it is to find you, apply to work for you, hear back from you, and decide to stay. Get those four things right, and the competition looks a lot less intimidating.

That's the work, and it's where we come in. Radar Talent Solutions helps K-12 districts build the recruiting infrastructure facilities hiring now demands: a value proposition that tells your real story, marketing that reaches candidates where they actually are, a low-friction application, and an onboarding process built to keep people from slipping away. We're a workforce solutions partner, not a staffing firm.

Schedule a free Discovery and Diagnostic session with our team