Opinion ID: 2470930
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Custodians and Custodian Engineers

Text: The Board of Education [6] (the Board) employs Custodians and Custodian Engineers [7] to take care of the approximately 1200 buildings in the City's school system. Custodian and CE positions are desirable supervisory jobs with good pay [8] and civil-service protections. Each Custodian or CE is assigned to a school, and he or she supervises all the handymen and cleaners at that school. The Custodian or CE also has the responsibility for the upkeep, cleanliness, and safety of the assigned school. The main difference between Custodians and CEs is that CEs have more experience and a difficult-to-obtain stationary engineer's license. During the times at issue in this case, the Board employed over 900 Custodians and CEs. Custodians and CEs are paid through a century-old, arcane, and idiosyncratic system known as the indirect system. See generally Beck v. Bd. of Educ. of City of New York, 268 A.D. 644, 646-47, 52 N.Y.S.2d 712 (N.Y.A.D.2d Dep't 1945). Under this system, the Custodian or CE is both a civil servant and an independent contractor. The Board allots each Custodian a lump sum of money based on the size and other characteristics of the assigned school. The Custodian uses some of this money to hire cleaners and helpers and to pay for supplies, and, up to a specified limit, he retains the rest for himself. The Board does not tell Custodians how to clean and maintain things or whom to hire; it only tells them whether the school is being cleaned and maintained satisfactorily. Custodians and CEs thus, purportedly, have an incentive to maintain their schools adequately but in a cost-effective manner. Id.