Maria Salazares and her staff start their day long before students have arrived at De Anza College.
“I’m not supposed to, but if I can, I like to open everything up and have everything ready by 6 o’clock,” she said.
“That way, I have more time during my eight-hour shift to work on other things that need to get done.”
De Anza College, like any other public school, is experiencing its share of fiscal issues and budget cuts.
One department that is feeling the devastation is the custodial operations.
“I’ve been at De Anza for 17 years and this is the worst I have ever seen it,” said Salazares.
Donna Jones-Dulin, associate vice president of Finance and Education Resources agreed.
“I’ve been here for 12 years and I’m not happy,” she said.
The Finance and Educational Resources Planning and Budgeting Team has proposed reducing the current budget by almost 7 percent, making a serious impact to the way the grounds and custodial staff operate.
Salazares said that the major cuts to her staff affect custodians tremendously as they have to prioritize and reduce their services.
Their main focus is restrooms and classrooms and the rest, whenever they get the chance.
Grounds staff has been reduced from 11 to four employees over the last five years, which results in each grounds keeper individually tending to over 20 acres each day.
Custodial staff has been reduced from 28 to 22 employees and each has to clean anywhere from 36,221 square feet to 51,744 square feet each day.
Jones-Dulin said although De Anza has to face these inevitable cuts, they have tried the best they can in efforts to help the understaffed custodians.
“We’ve known that there were going to be budget cuts so if people leave either for retirement or other positions, we save those positions,” she said.
With fewer cutodial staff members, the responsibility falls onto the students to clean up after themselves.
Jones-Dulin said the staff wants to present De Anza as a very clean and welcoming environment for all students.
All the littering and graffiti, especially on the new buildings are beyond their control.
“For every moment that we have to clean up after students, it takes away from the time that we can be doing something else,” she said.
The number of tedious tasks that custodians have to perform cannot even be completed in a standard eight-hour workday.
But even through all this stress and chaos, De Anza custodians still come to work with a positive attitude .
“I don’t think the students realize that our custodians take a great deal of pride in their work and they’re feeling bad that they can’t do it all,” said Jones-Dulin.
Salazares said she wants to put her signatures on everything she puts her time and energy into.
“Even if no one is watching me it’s something that I should be proud of. I do my best,” she said.
Salazares said that De Anza is a very important place for her .
“Everything I have came from my paycheck so why should I think differently,” she said.
Looking ahead, Jones-Dulin said she hopes that things get better for the custodial staff.  
Staff and faculty always strive to make De Anza students feel as though they are on a college campus and not just a higher-level high school.
And although the budget cuts are working against them at the moment, they will still strive for that goal.
“Hopefully in the next couple years, if the budget picks up, the custodial staff will definitely be high on our priority list of trying to [rebuild],” Jones-Dulin said.
“But until then, we just have to work with what we have and pray that we don’t have any more cuts.”