The best way to describe DPS, as I may have previously stated, is “short staffed and over worked”. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Everyone here just works so hard! They all just have a lot on their plates and it strikes me that things might run more smoothly if each person didn’t have so much to manage. Unfortunately there’s not much to be done that can change this, DPS couldn’t really afford to hire more people right now. Either way, I guess that’s where Millicent and I come in. I’m more than happy to make things easier on my supervisor, and I can tell he appreciates the extra help. Lately we’ve been filing a lot of bills and organizing folders on the side of our research project. I personally love going out and seeing the schools, since I get to see their energy & water bills all the time. It’s nice to put things in perspective and see their actually size and how they’re run. Late last week we got to visit a few shutdown schools that DPS owns. While DPS waits for someone to come along and buy the school, it just sits there usually getting broken into by copper robbers or needing maintenance for water pipes or energy meters. One school we visited had a pipe burst and fill the boiler room with 4 ft of water. Even though the school is empty DPS usually has to keep the water on in case of a fire. Another sad thing is how these school usually become a dumping area for random trash and tires. For the most part it doesn’t seem like there’s much to be done about these schools other than wait for the new owner to level them and build something new. I know it’s sad and that it’s also a problem but I know DPS is doing the best it can.
