Ed Board OK’s $$ Amid Custodial Mess

The Board of Education signed off on paying one contractor an additional $220,000 for custodial work that another contractor walked out on.

Meanwhile, the city’s public school district has closed its search and is now reviewing bids for a new part-time custodial crew to start next year. 

That’s the latest with New Haven Public Schools’ (NHPS’) efforts to keep the city’s school buildings clean.

The district currently contracts with the part-time custodial firm SJ Services, which along with other facilities vendors are managed by NHPS’ facilities management company, ABM. 

During Monday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held at John C. Daniels School, board members voted 6 – 1 to approve two purchase orders to pay ABM for its overtime custodial work at several permitted NHPS events between Dec. 1, 2024 and March 21, 2025. 

One now-approved agreement costing $169,817 was for providing event labor support services and floor support at the Floyd Little Athletic Center. The second agreement for $50,880.43 was for ​“permitted event labor support services and floor support for Hillhouse, Cross and Career High Schools from December 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025.” 

All school board members except for Andrea Downer voted to approve the two purchase orders to pay ABM, which the district said stepped in to do the facilities work when SJ Services failed to do so. ABM also has a multi-year contract with NHPS as its facilities manager, which for 2024 – 25 totals just over $1.9 million.

SJ Services, meanwhile, maintains that their team did all of the work required of them under their contract with NHPS — and that they walked out for roughly six weeks only for work that the district should have been paying extra for.

”A Lot Of Back & Forth”

At an April 7 Board of Education Finance and Operations committee meeting, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón joined ABM’s Jamar Alleyne and NHPS business director Christine Bourne to say that the district has been closely auditing its finances to sort through its budget deficit. In doing so, it evaluated its contractual agreements and invoices with contractors and found discrepancies with SJ Services invoices for custodial work performed this school year. 

Bourne pointed out that SJ Services requested an additional $500,000 for part-time work performed last year, which facilities consultant Michael Carter signed off on. While reviewing recent billing with the continued help of Carter, Bourne said that NHPS requested reduced bills this year due to SJ Services’ staff absences and difficulty validating the number of workers on jobs. 

“There’s been a lot of back and forth with them as we’re trying to validate how many people are on each night and how absences are covered, and how we validate who’s here and who’s not,” Bourne said. 

ABM’s fill-in work came at a lower cost than what the district would have paid SJ Services, Bourne added. 

Carter spent months of his facilities consultant work for NHPS crafting a new request for proposal (RFP) for NHPS to put its part-time custodial services contract back out to bid. That RFP opened March 9 and closed April 8. 

NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon and ABM’s Alleyne did not respond to requests for comment about how many vendors responded to the RFP. According to the city’s procurement portal, the RFP has several users subscribed to updates for the project. It lists ten vendors as having submitted ​“responses.” Those vendors include ABM and SJ Services. 

“We have shared our questions about SJ Services’ time tracking and billing practices with them, and they have been working with us to resolve our concerns. Our goal is to continue those conversations and to work toward a positive resolution of issues on either side,” Harmon said in an April 11 email response to a request for comment.

At recent Board of Education meetings, board member Andrea Downer has raised several concerns with the discrepancies of paying ABM its more-than-million-dollar agreement and the lack of early warnings about SJ Services walking out and apparent ​“breach of contract.” When she questioned whether ABM’s substitute work was verified when that company stepped in, Bourne said that all invoices and work submitted by ABM were confirmed by NHPS. 

SJ Services: We Did What Contract Requires

Reached for comment last Thursday, SJ Services Director of Client Services David Shea disagreed with NHPS’ claims that the company has not been correctly invoicing payroll hours for its employees and maintaining accurate attendance for part-time work performed. 

Shea said that SJ Services’ agreement with NHPS lays out its base part-time custodial work at Cross, Hillhouse, Career, and Floyd Little with mention of additional service options at an additional rate for NHPS’ permitted events. 

For those occasions when SJ Services is called on for overtime custodial work for after-school meetings, deep cleaning in the summer, or for athletic events, Shea said, it expects the additional pay for its employees’ extra work. 

Over the summer, however, Shea said his team was told by district leaders that SJ Services’ on-call work for permitted events was part of its base contract and not an additional cost for services. 

Shea said this is where NHPS misinterpreted the agreement. The part-time custodial contract is for SJ Services to ​“staff four-hour, part-time custodians and a manager to provide cleaning services to the New Haven Public Schools.” The contract, Shea said, explains that the district’s requests for overtime work at permitted events are ​“additional services” requested. 

When NHPS indicated to SJ Services it would not be paying for the additional permitted work, Shea’s team was instructed to stop accepting the permitted work requested by the district. 

Shea noted that SJ Services continued the work of its base contract and only stopped accepting the extra hours for permitted events. He also said the halt of services did not last through March as the district claims, but began Nov. 21 and lasted four to six weeks. After discussing and determining that payroll invoices and attendance were accurate with the district, Shea said SJ Services returned back to doing the permitted-event custodial work weeks later. 

In response to the district’s allegation that SJ Services’ employee work hours submitted were not truly reflective of the work completed, Shea said as NHPS’ management company, ABM is charged with tracking contractors’ attendance. 

He also provided the Independent with an Aug. 13, 2024, email from SJ Services’ director of operations to the company president explaining that a new system called ConnectTeam was purchased to use GPS to track employees clocking in for New Haven work this year. As well as a receipt that the software was purchased July 29, 2024. ConnectTeam makes it so when employees arrive on site to school buildings, they must clock in on a phone app which tracks their specific location to be sure they are on site. 

The email: ​“Just a quick update on the call-in system for the New Haven district. The system went live yesterday with 96% of employees logging in successfully! The program is user-friendly and supports multiple languages. A few employees do not own a smartphone, so we are working with them to secure a calling number for their day-to-day use.…Going forward, we will be able to generate daily and weekly reports, especially for our billing process.”

Shea concluded that after months of answering NHPS’ questions in ​“excruciating detail,” SJ Services is open to further conversations but expects to be paid for all work performed this year.