A whistleblower custodian at Porterville Unified who reported the improper disposal of a
cleaning chemical to authorities said he is being retaliated against by his employer.
Paul Jaramillo, 66, a custodian for 10 years, said he received “an evaluation that was
horrible, horrible” shortly after reporting the incident to Tulare County Environmental
Health.
He said he expects to pay a price for being a whistleblower and has gone to his labor union
for help.
“They’re going to do something to me,” he said. “I don’t know what it is yet.”
Without mentioning Jaramillo by name, a district official said no adverse actions have been
taken.
“I can assure you there has been no retaliation,” said Ken Gibbs, assistant superintendent
for business services. “He has not been demoted or removed.”
On March 17, Jaramillo saw custodians removing wax from a floor at a high school and
washing the effluent containing a corrosive chemical into a drain connected to the city’s
storm drainage system, he said.
Environmental Health notified the Regional Water Quality Control Board and Porterville
officials, and advised the city to issue a cease and desist order.
It also told the district to dispose of cleaning fluid waste in the sewer system instead of the
storm drain and to get a city permit.
City water utility superintendent Mike Knight said it appears none of the effluent actually
reached the city’s storm drain system, and the city will ask the district to use the sewer
system and to dilute the effluent.
Jaramillo, who once owned a metal plating business, said he got the custodian job to
improve his retirement income and needs a couple of years more on the job.
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5/9/2016 Whistleblower custodian in Porterville fears ret
The Philosopher Kings profiles eight janitors who work at elite American universities (Duke, Berkeley, and Cornell, for example). We see them at work, meticulously scrubbing toilets and dusting windowsills. We see them at play, building sculptures and playing guitar in cover bands. We learn about their childhood, their unique struggles, their greatest triumphs, and through it all, wisdom is revealed in the unlikeliest of places…or so is the point of the film. Why janitors? And why at universities? The film’s frame at first appears both esoteric and limiting, but upon examination, it is quite effective. Universities, because there is a sharp distinction between employees whose work is intellectual and those whose work is physical. Janitors, because they are so often overlooked. But also because their work is repetitive. As we watch custodian Oscar Dantzler rearrange the endless rows of chairs in the Duke chapel we hear him say, “If you’re miserable every day, you’re doing something wrong.” Simple, bold, and true. As the subjects wash, rinse, and repeat, we see the zen in their occupational ritual. They are American monks living amongst us.
Early in this uneven yet moving documentary, a university janitor greets a woman exiting the restroom he's about to clean. She doesn't respond. Neither does she look at him nor acknowledge his presence in any way. In "The Philosopher Kings," director Patrick Shen insists that we look at individuals usually relegated to the margins.
That straightforward insistence is the lifeblood of the film, which profiles eight people who work as custodians at institutions of higher learning. The sole woman notes that when she tells people what she does, they usually clam up, certain that nothing interesting could possibly ensue. Their loss.
The documentary The Philosopher Kings, directed by Patrick Shen, is punctuated by Bill Clinton’s 2007 commencement address to the 2007 class of the Rochester Institute of Technology. (My old film school alma mater, by the way.) In the speech, the former president advises the recent graduates to consider the workers who set up the chairs for them to sit on during the ceremony, and who will then remove the chairs and clean up the mess they leave behind before they move out into the real world.
Shen does just that. While the director doesn’t profile any custodians at RIT — the Clinton footage appears to have been acquired, rather than produced for this film — The Philosopher Kings gets up close and personal with eight maintenance workers at seven different institutes of higher learning all over the country for an extremely moving and engaging film.
Choosing this topic for a documentary, and choosing a title like Philosopher Kings, there’s a real risk of over-dramatizing and over-elevating one’s subjects. Yet, Shen directs with a restrained hand. His subjects are just people. Nothing more, nothing less. They are hard-working folks just trying to make their way through this world like anybody else.
When you think of successful university careers, you might think of presidents, provosts and deans; when you think of the wisdom to be found on campus, you’re likely to think of professors sharing the fruits of their decades of research on chemistry, classics, or quantum mechanics. You almost certainly won’t think of the folks cleaning the bathrooms, washing the floors, and changing the trash bags. Might you be missing something?
I think it was a culmination of things really. I remember stumbling upon a CD from the band The Philosopher Kings at one of the music stores where I worked in high school.
That led me to Plato’s “Republic”, which then ultimately inspired me to want to make a movie someday called The Philosopher Kings that would somehow challenge our views about whom we turn to for leadership and guidance.
Years later while I was shooting interviews for my last documentary, Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality, a professor remarked that if we talked to janitors we might gain better insight into the human condition than we might from talking to professors. That’s when it all clicked for me.
BNT: Why did you pick custodians from prestigious universities over other types of environments?
Choosing learning institutions as the backdrop for the film was our subtle attempt to challenge people to reexamine our notion of wisdom and what constitutes a proper education.
We’d all agree that it’s a bit ironic to be seeking wisdom from janitors rather than the professors on a college campus. The question is, why is that ironic? What has led us to think of wisdom being exclusive to a particular profession or class of people?
SYNOPSIS: In search of wisdom found in unlikely places, The Philosopher Kings takes us on a journey through the halls of the most prestigious colleges and universities in America to learn from the staff members who see it all and have been through it all: the custodians. This thought-provoking, feature-length documentary interweaves the untold stories of triumph and tragedy from the members of society who are often disregarded and ignored, and seeks out the kind of wisdom that gets you through the day and the lessons one learns from surviving hard times, lost loves, and shattered dreams.
From the producers of the multiple-award winning Flight from Death, The Philosopher Kings gives us the opportunity to learn from eight incredible individuals whom we would never have otherwise taken a moment out of our day to acknowledge.
“A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” ~ Chinese Proverb
CAST & CREW: Director/Editor: Patrick Shen Producers: Patrick Shen, Greg Bennick Written by: Patrick Shen, Greg Bennick
AWARDS: WINNER: Emerging Cinematic Vision Award Camden International Film Festival
WINNER: Best Documentary Lighthouse International Film Festival
WINNER: Special Judges’ Mention Newburyport Film Festival
NOMINATED: Best Documentary AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Film Festival
NOMINATED: Best Documentary Raindance Film Festival
NOMINATED: Best Documentary Calgary International Film Festival
ACCLAIM: “Moving….” —Sheri Linden, LA Times
“The visuals are crisp, and Shen’s seamless editing creates conversation between his various subjects, as the spoken musing of one plays over the images of another. Kings arcs hard toward its uplifting ending, but it also completely earns it.” —Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly
“TERRIFIC documentary about janitors – yes janitors.” —G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
Jason Enjady puts the finishing touches on a brick walkway, part of a four-panel mural dedicated Friday to the North Star Elementary School. The mural shows the transition from infant to high school graduate, and the final panel features the city of Albuquerque. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — We are deep in a conversation about the power of art – how it inspires, enlightens, enriches, how for as long as Jason Enjady can remember it has been both his passion and his ballast, how for eight months he pondered the intricacies and the message he wanted to convey in his latest project – when duty calls.
“Mr. Jason,” a small boy says as he walks up to us with a look of urgency. “The toilet paper roll is empty.”
And so it is back to reality.
Reality for Enjady is his job as a custodian at North Star Elementary School, a beautiful (and very clean) campus on the toniest northern boundary of Albuquerque. The married father of four daughters has been with Albuquerque Public Schools for 10 years, much of that at this school.
Always, he has been an artist.
That’s his passion. Being a custodian puts food on the table. But art puts joy in his heart.
Jason Enjady may be the custodian at North Star Elementary School, but these days he’s also known as the artist in residence. He just completed a massive mural for the school that hangs in the library and is visible through most of the main building. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)
And that heart is mighty big. Rarely does he ask to be paid for his art. Most of it these days is for the North Star kids.
“My hope is to encourage the kids to find something they love to do,” he says. “That’s not necessarily art, but whatever they figure out on their own that gives them that spark.”
Drawing came easily to Enjady, known for his intricate symbolism, each stroke of the pen or brush or dry-erase marker (more on that later) possessing more meaning than what the eye first sees.
An ink drawing he did for North Star staffers of the school’s mascot may look like just a wolf, but look closer. The nose is a child and adult, the snout a telescope, an ear a child’s hands. The fur splayed on either side spells out the name of the school.
“I gave them this design so they could use it to raise money for field trips,” he says.
And they have. The drawing is being used on T-shirts for sale to benefit the school.
Enjady’s latest gift to the school is something he says is really the school’s gift to him. About a year ago, one of the school’s architects asked Enjady whether he would be willing to paint the four massive canvas panels that hang high on the two-story-tall walls of the library. The panels, which measure about 9 feet by 7 feet each, are visible through glassed-in walls of the main building as you first enter.
Enjady jumped at the chance. He asked for no money.
“I told them, get the canvases,” says the 36-year-old uber- exuberant Enjady, who speaks as if every sentence should end in an exclamation point. “Take them down and let me at them. It was such an opportunity for putting art on the wall. That means more to me than money.”
The mural he created takes the viewer on a journey from toddler through high school graduate, from the universe to the world in which that graduate will make his or her life.
The architect, like everybody else at North Star, has seen Enjady’s talent in the dry-erase works of art he creates at the school. Using markers and his hands to smudge the colors just so, and guided by ideas the kids give him, he graces a large whiteboard hanging in the school cafeteria each day with all make of animal, landscape or character.
But he has rules.
“I tell the kids, ‘You guys must respect the artwork and not touch or mess it up,’ ” he says. “And they never have. I also tell them I won’t draw if I hear they’ve been misbehaving or not doing their homework. And they never do.”
Enjady says he hopes to be the artistic inspiration he never had. One of three brothers raised by a single mom, he had a somewhat rootless life because her phone company job required them to move frequently.
Friends came and went, and sometimes they weren’t particularly the right friends. Art was his constant companion.
“I drew every night,” he says. “I’d draw things for people. I’d get pens and draw on people, like fake tattoos. I’d draw on tennis shoes or anything I could get my hands on.”
He had no formal art training, except for one airbrush class he took mostly to use the equipment he could not afford.
But art has remained pleasure rather than profession. In terms of the latter, he’s been a barber, wildland firefighter and construction worker before he settled into the job of school custodian.
Perhaps someday he will make a living with his art. He has thought of getting into the tattoo business. He’s in discussion with another school for another big art installation.
For now, he says, he’s happy just getting to share his passion for free.
“I’d rather get known than rich first,” he says. “If someone notices my art and it inspires them, then I have succeeded.”
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.http://ABQjournal.com/letters/new
