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At Monday's Board of Ed Finance & Operations meeting.
The city’s public school district is looking to pay its former part-time custodial contractor up to $1.4 million this summer — as it works on finalizing a new $5.8 million deal with a new custodial contractor.
The Board of Education Finance & Operations Committee recommended approval of that plan during its latest online-only meeting Monday.
The committee endorsed a contract between the school district and SJ Services to help with the “transition of part-time custodial management.” The contract, if approved by the full Board of Education, would extend from July 1 to Sept. 30, and would cost up to $1,470,441.60.
The district most recently dropped SJ Services as New Haven’s part-time custodial contractor due to concerns with the company’s quality of work. The Board of Education instead decided to sign a new $5,868,495 contract with part-time custodial vendor ServiceMaster Elite Janitorial Services for the 2025 – 26 school year.
But that latter contract hasn’t yet been finalized.
And so, on Monday, NHPS Asst. Supt. Paul Whyte pitched the committee on this new short-term contract with SJ Services. He said the school district would like to employ SJ Services to begin preparing New Haven’s school buildings for deep cleaning before the start of the new school year. He described this $1.47 million deal as a “short-term contract as we transition over to our new service provider as it’s going through the contract system. We still need to have work done to have our schools ready.”
A memo provided to the committee stated, “There will be no overlapping of payment between the two contractors. ServiceMaster will not receive payment until they begin service, after their contract has completed the City’s authorization process.”
That memo, written by Central Office Business Director Christine Bourne on July 2, also states, “We expect the [ServiceMaster] contract process to take another 6 – 10 weeks, thus creating the need to continue with S.J. Services for that period of time.”
Click here to read the full memo.
Whyte told the committee Monday that the SJ Services agreement, if approved, will have a provision allowing the district to end the agreement at any point with a 10-day notice. He said the district does not expect to pay the full $1.4 million, as it hopes that the ServiceMaster contract will be approved within the next few months.
School board committee member Andrea Downer raised concerns about 6 – 10 weeks of part-time custodial working costing over $1 million.
Whyte noted that the billing is done at an hourly rate, and that SJ Services’ 186 employees would do four hours of work each day. The work will include deep cleaning buildings, preparing classrooms for the school year, and stripping building floors.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend approval of the SJ Services contract, which now heads to the full Board of Ed.
All of this comes as the Board of Ed recently approved a $220.7 million budget for the fiscal year that started July 1. That NHPS budget will see the closure of Brennan-Rogers School due to its declining enrollment, the elimination of 76 vacant teacher and central office positions, the reduction of funding for athletics-related travel, and a number of other cuts in order to avoid a previously pitched plan to lay off up to 129 student-facing school staffers. The mayor also recently proposed sending an additional $3 million to the district to help close a deficit and avoid teacher layoffs.