John Dufay Helps Albuquerque Public Schools Evolve

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Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) is the largest of 89 public school districts in the state of New Mexico and has a total of 143 schools with around 70,000 students. For the past 36 years, John Dufay has been committed to serving the district now as executive director of maintenance and operations.

Throughout that time, he’s maintained a strong belief that all children can learn as long as they have the proper tools and the environments to do so. That has made Dufay’s mission clear: to transform the maintenance, operations, and facilities department to evolve with the needs of students.

“Society today is changing so much and so is education. If you’re going to be a 21st century school, you need to be a 21st century maintenance, operations, and facilities department,” says Dufay, whose team oversees 155 sites and 19.2 million square feet of district property. “You need to look at new types of educational spaces with collaboration spaces, new designs, and cutting-edge maintenance technology that make your department effective and efficient. You also need to think outside the box to find innovative solutions that allow us to minimize interruptions to learning.”

Dufay and his colleagues have been doing that since he started in 1988, when APS became one of the first school districts in the country to create a forward-thinking environmental department. In the same spirit, Dufay spent the following decades helping his operations and facilities teams keep pace with technological changes. A traditional and manual work order system were traded for a website-driven one that allows technicians to easily view and respond to requests via tablets.

The department adopted high-tech HVAC systems that produced deep dive analytics and led to energy savings and efficiencies. It also started to leverage tools that “make our jobs easier,” like CNC equipment and analytical equipment for our modem fleet, Dufay says.

“It’s not the way we used to do things, but we’re in a world now where high tech is everywhere, whether it’s in our cars or our equipment. You got to adapt to that world of technology because it’s advancing so fast that it’ll leave you behind and you won’t be able to do the things you need to do,” he explains. “I’m proud of all that we’ve done to create a more effective department. What we’ve done helps provide a much better learning environment, which is the whole point of maintenance: so students can focus on their learning.”

The transition proved a major learning curve for every member of Dufay’s team. Younger technicians were introduced to archaic boiler systems that they weren’t taught about in their undergraduate studies, given that the average APS school is between 45 to 75 years old. While older techs can work with those systems with their eyes closed, they’re still getting used to things like high-tech VRF systems air-conditioning or ground source heat pumps.

Training the old guard and the new has been a challenge but has remained a priority for Dufay, who also seeks to inspire the next generation of talent via internships and trade career exposure.

“The trades have really been neglected in education even though they can be far more profitable than most college careers,” Dufay says. “Right now, we have several juniors and seniors looking for their next step and I believe that we can train our own and get them to get those jobs right away. That’s where the future is. If we don’t focus on doing internships or getting kids trained, we need to at least give them an avenue to find their way to a lucrative career.”

As a leader, Dufay prides himself on having a student-centered mindset. Their needs should guide everything that he and his colleagues do, he believes.

“If what we’re doing doesn’t benefit the kids, then maybe we’re doing the wrong thing, and we may need to stop rethink what we’re doing. We may need to reallocate our resources more appropriately or we may need to give the kids more resources to be successful,” he says. “These are the things you need to examine daily to make sure you’re doing the right thing.”

He also is big on making data-driven decisions.

“When we’re looking at the direction we want to go on a rebuilt, a remodel, or when we’re planning where to look at resources, we need to look at the data,” he explains. “How much have we already spent; what can we conclude from our work orders data and other reporting metrics? That allows you to figure out how to use limited resources.”

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