City of New Haven
An uncovered and rusty exhaust fan at Fair Haven School, juxtaposed with properly covered fans on another rooftop. This photograph was taken last fall when city inspectors discovered widespread long-term neglect in maintenance of schools.
New Haven Public Schools
Tom Breen Pre-Pandemic Photo
Board member Conaway: Bring back people who worked with these machines.
Bringing 19 custodial and maintenance positions back onto the New Haven Public Schools payroll would cost only $80,000 more than outsourcing over the course of five years.
Schools Chief Financial Officer Phillip Penn provided that updated cost estimate to the Board of Education this week.
“We would get better local control and more responsibility for achieving the goals of the district,” said board member Darnell Goldson.
“The structure doesn’t necessarily provide that,” Penn responded. “People will need to be held accountable going forward [in any structure].”
The school district privatized part of its custodial force in 2011. A year later, school leadership hailed the move as producing cleaner schools and $1 million in overtime savings.
After embarrassing revelations about years of deferred and overlooked maintenance, the Board of Education is reconsidering that decision.
A boiler broke, sending Wexler-Grant students home early. Filters were caked with dust until this October, when the district put in new filters at every school as a Covid-19 safety measure. (City inspectors found years’ worth of maintenance neglect at schools throughout the city at the time.) Exhaust fans had rusted because someone had forgotten to cover them in the rain. Bringing West Rock and Quinnipiac schools up to code would cost so much that the district decided to close them altogether.
This is on top of complaints from previous years that urgent maintenance requests were being ignored, even in brand new schools built during New Haven’s $1.7 billion, school construction boom.
Both the current maintenance contractor, Go To Services, and others within the district have emphasized that this is a resource problem. The district never had enough money to spend on preventative maintenance, so Go To prioritized maintenance requests as best as it could.
Hire Or Outsource?
New Haven Public Schools
At Monday’s board meeting, Penn reported that costs would not be very different between an in-house and outsourced workforce. The third — and most expensive — option would be to add more in-house maintenance positions while keeping most of the current contract in place.
• The board could continue to outsource maintenance, just try to switch contractors. This would involve sending out a new request for proposals from maintenance companies and hoping a solid variety of companies respond. Because of a provision in the current contract, the earliest the new contractor could start would be around Sept. 3. These contracts tend to cost about three percent more each year, so Penn estimated the district would spend $8,077,758 over five years.
• The board could switch completely over to in-house staff. This would involve hiring for 19 new positions, which would be a lengthy process. Because salaries increase by about 2.5 percent each year and benefit costs increase by 6 percent, this option would cost the district $8,153,212 over five years.
• The board could hire five, key in-house positions focused on the kind of maintenance that has been overlooked. The rest of the contract would stay the same. This option would total $9,063,358 over the course of five years.
While most expensive, the third option would prevent chaos at the beginning of the next school year and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the district does not currently have a chief operating officer, this option would give the district time to hire for that role before making large operational changes. (It is more expensive than the others because it includes hiring extra positions.)
Both the second and third options respond to a point board member Larry Conaway has emphasized: The district should hire back the people who used to tend to these machines.
Until 2013, New Haven Public Schools had an engineer on staff within the custodians union. This person would change filters in ventilation systems and change belts and grease motors on the fans that exhausted stale air out of the building. Then, that position was cut.
Tom Breen Pre-Pandemic Photo
Board member Conaway: Bring back people who worked with these machines.
Penn proposed hiring an engineer and four preventative maintenance technicians as part of the second and third options. Particularly in the in-house labor option, this would provide more of a career path for the building managers and assistant building managers who currently clean and maintain the public schools.
The impending closure of West Rock and Quinnipiac schools means the district needs four fewer building managers and assistant building managers. Because of this, the five new positions would only look like one new position in the district’s budget.
After board member Ed Joyner emphasized the superintendent’s responsibility for operations decisions, the board asked Superintendent Iline Tracey to recommend one of the three options as the path forward.
Are expenses being calculated based on current agreement costs? Or are they being calculated based on resource usage required as defined by Go To Services and others within the district?
Penn noted that accountability is required no matter the path forward so before we take large steps and drastic measures wouldn't it be more prudent to find a COO and establish oversight guidelines for outside contractors?