At what cost?

PALMER — The school district’s contract for custodial services is no more.

In a 5-2 vote Wednesday before a packed house, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board decided to bring the janitors back as in-house employees, rather than contracting for the work as the district has since 2006.

At a meeting June 10 on the topic, district officials told the school board that because of the district’s benefit package and other costs such as the cost to purchase equipment to replace that owned by the contractor, bringing the workers back in-house for the same dollar amount as the district’s contract with NANA Management Services would result in deep staffing cuts. For example, split-shift janitors would handle most elementary schools, working shifts that begin early in the morning, break for most of the day and resume around the time school dismissed.

Board member Ole Larson said he wasn’t convinced that the split shifts and other staffing cuts were the only answer.

“There’s got to be two or three or four solutions to a problem, not just one solution,” Larson said.

Board member Erick Cordero asked district Superintendent George Troxel, to come to the body’s August meeting with proposals for how to add $1 million to the janitorial services budget without cutting teaching jobs, other employees or classroom programs.

Troxel agreed to do that, but cautioned, “With close to 90 percent of our budget being in salaries and benefits, anytime we are asked to reduce the budget by a million dollars people will be losing their jobs.”

In proposing that the janitors be brought back into the district, Cordero urged his fellow board members to vote with their hearts.

“I truly believe in my heart that the decision that the board took in 2006 was a terrible mistake,” he said.

The board also heard from the wife and the daughter of a janitor laid off during the outsourcing.

Kristy Jones, the wife, said her husband was a second-generation janitor and very proud of his job. But when NANA came in, the $12 per hour wage they offered wasn’t enough and her husband took a job on the North Slope. Now, the family has no health insurance and is struggling just to pay bills. Their heat was shut off in the dead of winter.

“His humor, his spark, his self-respect are all gone,” she said of her husband.

Colleen Hamblen and Susan Pougher, voted against bringing the custodians back.

“I’m not so much interested in being an employment agency. I’m interested in being an education provider,” Hamblen said.

She also apologized to the public for waiting until the last school board meeting possible to address the issue, saying with more time the board could hammer out a better arrangement.

Pougher told janitors that it wasn’t even clear, at this point, if bringing the custodians back into the district would mean there would be more full-time, better paying jobs out there. She also said she didn’t think it wise to bring the custodians back into the district knowing that the services would likely cost the district as much as they did before the outsourcing.

“We haven’t solved the problem that sent them out to contract in the first place,” she said.

Board member Sarah Welton said she’d gone back and forth on the issue. On the one hand, she said, she was in favor of unions — the janitors working for the school district will have union representation — and had opposed outsourcing from the start. On the other, she felt the whole issue needed more discussion and more planning. Eventually she voted for bringing the janitors back, but directed most of her comments at a plea for peace and healing.

“We’re in this together, let’s work it out,” Welton said.

Rick Byrnes, president of the Classified Employees Association, the union that will represent the janitors when they come back as district employees, said he’s hoping the janitors can be put to work as soon as possible. He said the district has already interviewed 150 candidates and the only step left is to get fingerprint checks and assign them to schools.

“Our hope is within the next three days we get moving on this thing and get people back into the buildings,” he said.

He called the 5-2 vote decisive and said the direction the board gave was clear.

“Our feeling on this is it really has put that whole dark chapter of the district’s history to rest.”

HOW THEY VOTED

Should custodians be school district employees?

Jim Colver: Yes

Erick Cordero: Yes

Colleen Hamblen: No

Ole Larson: Yes

Susan Pougher: No

Myrl Thompson: Yes

Sarah Welton: Yes