Custodial contract back

March 24, 2006

JOEL DAVIDSON

Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - The Mat-Su School Board will consider April 5 whether to terminate a highly contentious private contract they recently awarded to NANA Management Services. The contract effectively eliminated 112 school custodians from the Mat-Su School District's fiscal year 2007 budget in favor of allowing NANA to take over custodial and light maintenance duties in Mat-Su schools.

On March 1, the school board voted 4-3 to approve the contract, despite the opposition of hundreds of school district employees, their families and supporters.

Chief School Administrator Bob Doyle recommended the cuts to save the district $1.6 million next year. District

administrators argued that increasing costs of employee retirement benefits, health insurance and salary increases have taxed the school district's budget. Doyle repeatedly has warned school board members that failure to cut costs in custodial services could lead to cuts in the classrooms.

School board members Linda Menard and Rob Wells both worked to put the contract back before the board. On Wednesday, Menard said she proposed the motion to terminate the contract after the board voted to ask the Mat-Su Borough Assembly and the state legislature for more funding.

If the board's funding requests were approved, it would mean $2 million more from the borough and $4 million more from the state.

While neither of those increases are guaranteed, Menard said she wanted to see if the board would support terminating the NANA contract, were the money to come through.

&#8220I want to know if the board thinks there is enough interest to reinstate the custodians and not have the contract,” she said after the Wednesday meeting. &#8220If the money comes through, then we have added money to play with.”

Critics of the NANA contract have questioned publicly whether a private company would provide the same level of services for the district. Others argued it was unfair to district custodians to ask them to do the same job for less pay with a private company.

In testimony before the school board, however, NANA officials have said they would provide better service than the district currently receives, with monthly reports on the cleanliness of schools as well as supervision for all night custodians.

The school board revisits the issue at its next meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. April 5 at Palmer High School.

Contact Joel Davidson at 352-2266 or joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.