Oxford-based Clear Creek Amana (CCA) School District didn’t just provide Seth Graesser and Tyler Hibbs with a top-notch public school education; it also presented them with career opportunities and a way to give back.
Graesser and Hibbs graduated from CCA High School in 2010 and have now worked for the district—one of the fastest growing in Iowa—for over a decade. Hibbs serves as the district’s grounds manager, while Graesser is the maintenance and custodial manager.
The men agree that if their work remains unnoticed by colleagues, students, and the general public, it means they’re doing their jobs well.
“With the night staff or even the maintenance side of things, we have to do it behind curtains because we can’t interrupt class,” Graesser said. “They don’t really see how it got done; they don’t know when it got done—we handle it. They just come into a building that should be clean, should be safe, and it should be maintained.”
Building projects and grounds maintenance often overlap during projects, but the departments are distinct, and Hibbs and Graesser lead their respective crews.
“I basically just kind of oversee everything with the ground for the entire district,” Hibbs said. “A big part of it’s just making sure the mowing and trimming and gardens are getting taken care of, overseeing the athletic fields, kind of just running the crew, and bigger picture stuff like project management.”
CCA’s ground team manages over 200 acres of land occupied by district buildings. They also oversee just over 100 acres of farmland owned by the district, which has not yet been developed.
‘I worked my way up’
While Hibbs and his team keep the outside looking nice—including plowing snow in the winter—Graesser and his crew take care of CCA’s eight school buildings and several auxiliary buildings across five communities in Eastern Iowa.
Graesser oversees maintenance and custodial crews at every building and directs resources based on staffing availability and facility needs. He even earned his Certified Pool & Spa Operator license to maintain the district’s pool in Amana.
The Amana native started working for CCA while he was still in high school by participating in the district’s summer help program.
“Essentially, I just helped clean the buildings to get them ready for the next school year,” Graesser said.
Maury Gallagher, CCA’s longtime Director of Buildings and Grounds, saw potential in the then-teenager and hired him full-time in January 2011 as a night custodian. Graesser also earned an industrial maintenance technology degree from Kirkwood Community College while working.
“I just kind of worked my way up, and then having that degree from Kirkwood kind of helped me get to where I am today,” Graesser said.
Maintenance needs expand across district
Hibbs also attended Kirkwood, initially pursuing a degree in diesel truck technology in hopes of becoming a diesel mechanic. So, how did he move from that pursuit to working for the school district? Again, Gallager played a role.
While working part-time at Theisen’s, another CCA graduate asked Hibbs if he would consider a position with the district, which didn’t have a grounds program at the time and owned just a single mower. Hibbs was interested. When Gallagner came to the store for an unrelated matter, the former classmate introduced the two, and the rest is history.
“I started doing that, and I just started really enjoying it,” Hibbs said of maintaining the district’s grounds.
As the budding grounds team added mowers and additional land, CCA needed someone to supervise operations. Hibbs stepped up. .
“I’ve been able to kind of keep growing the program and grow myself and watch things grow,” said Hibbs.
“As CCA grows, obviously, its needs grow, so it’s kind of, like, right place, right time, a little bit too,” added Graesser. “With us having graduated [from CCA], we know the buildings and ground pretty well, so it’s that natural progression.”
Creating an ‘immaculate’ graduation
One of the building and grounds teams’ most involved annual events is high school graduation.
“We had a new superintendent this year, and he wants it to be flawless, essentially, It’s his first graduation, he wants things to look immaculate, he wants things to go smoothly, rightfully so,” Graesser said.
CCA also opted to have this year’s graduation ceremony at the football stadium rather than indoors, where it is typically held. This meant assembling a stage, setting up temporary bleachers to fit more audience members, and properly laying out chairs on the field for graduates.
“It’s an undertaking,” Graesser said. “Tyler and his crew being outdoors, getting everything spruced up, looking pristine with the mowers, and the trimming and the mulching, the flower beds, all that stuff.”
“We just really nitpick everything for graduation,” Hibbs noted.
Although the building and grounds teams tend to shy away from the spotlight, they recently received a shoutout on CCA’s social media pages for the work they did to prepare for this year’s ceremony.
With their skill sets and experience, Graesser and Hibbs could find well-paying work at a number of places in the private sector, so what is it about working in a public school system that keeps them around?
“It’s a really great place to work,” Hibb said.
Graesser agreed, and noted a deeper reason they stick around CCA.
“It’s a nice feeling that we’re giving back to the place that kind of brought us up,” he said.
