Looking around the school halls of Riverbend, you might not be able to tell any drastic differences from previous years. However, the regular school janitors were missing since the beginning of the year School Board meeting on November 14. The school board terminated their contract with C and J Maintenance, which affects all of the schools in Spotsylvania County. School Principal, Dr. Wright said, “The School Board has taken on [the] responsibility [of hiring new janitors]. From my understanding, they have already hired several custodians back at all of the schools and are working on getting them all back to fully staffed. For many years, all custodians were Spotsylvania County Employees; however, about 12 years ago, we started going with outside vendors such as C and J Maintenance and Service Solutions. There are both positives and negatives to using an outside vendor for custodial services, but the Board felt that it was best to go back to managing these services ourselves.” Although the School Board isn’t hiring janitors from the same companies as they did in the past, many of the same custodians are being hired. Administrator, Mr. Lutterbie said the school probably only lost about two janitors since the beginning of the school year, but the number fluctuates every year. “It has had some effect on the cleanliness of the school. Things are getting cleaned less frequently, except for the bathrooms. They are getting cleaned the same amount as in previous years [by janitors hired independently by the county].” The only things being done less frequently are tasks such as sweeping the classroom floors. Junior, Howie Truong said, “I actually haven’t noticed a big difference at all in how clean the school has been, but I did notice there were less janitors in the school hallways.” Whether noticeable or not, the issue has definitely made the students at Riverbend gain more respect and gratefulness for the janitors we still have.