Janitorial services force changes

On Aug. 5, an important meeting of the Mat-Su School Board will take place. The decisions made that night will affect parents, students, teachers and taxpayers in the Valley. If one of the above describes you, I encourage you to attend.

What will be voted on is the Certified Employee Contract. A brief history on this subject: Three years ago the school district outsourced the CEA custodians. The private company, NANA, now NMS, was given the contract. This was done as a cost saving measure. The state was requiring the re-imbursement of more than $2 million by the school district for disputed IEP student numbers.

The three-year contract with NMS was set to expire at the end of May, 2009. CEA has heavily lobbied some school board members to return the contract to CEA, and after listening to much testimony from CEA, the school board voted not to renew the contract with NMS for the upcoming year. We would go without janitors for the summer while we negotiated a contract with the union. Numbers from the union and administration indicated that rehiring CEA custodians would cost the school district, conservatively, an additional $1.7 million. I, along with members Pougher and Welton, had voted to extend the NMS contract based on this and other findings. The school board had paid for an independent study of the scope of work done by NMS for the previous three years. The result: 80 percent of the respondents (more than 900 people) stated the buildings were as clean or cleaner with NMS than with the CEA, and 81 percent of the respondents were as satisfied or more satisfied with the services provided by NMS management than when CEA had the contract. Paying less for better services seemed like the best option. This would also give the parties involved another year to negotiate a contract that would be equitable, and well thought out. The other four members of the school board did not agree.

In June it was voted that any contract with CEA had to meet the allotted funding by the school board during the budget process. In other words, CEA would have to be able to do the job for the same amount as NMS had presented in their bid of $5.4 million. This would mean cutting some positions and going to split shifts.

At the final meeting of the summer, member Cordero amended the language of the vote and asked the administration to find $1 million in the budget for the CEA janitors. With a vote of 4 – 3, Pougher, Hamblen and Welton opposed, it was decided to take an additional million from “other” programs to help bring the custodians financially closer to where they want to be. This is a quagmire. Now we are dealing with contract negotiations within a contract negotiation. You see, the amendment wasn’t to find $1 million for the CEA contract, which includes 600 other contract workers. It was specifically for the janitors. They have now been elevated to a status above the other CEA members.

As a school board member, my No. 1 concern is what is best for education in the Valley. I have to wonder where we will find the funding for these custodians. A teacher in the Valley, Mr. Don Campbell, testified before the school board that he will “probably have 27 or so kids in my classroom. I would be more than happy to take 33 in my classroom if you would bring back CEA.” It appears that the CEA janitors have also been elevated above student learning.

Nearly 90 percent of our spending is for salaries. These are contracted personnel; this is a fixed expenditure. Other fixed spending items are utilities, which rose by about $750,000 last year. The Mat-Su Borough increased its school budget this year by $700,000.

Member Thompson believes the money can come from the stimulus package. The stimulus funds distribution is specifically for the following areas; 1) improve results for students, 2) increase teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers, 3) turn around lowest performing schools, 4) adopt rigorous standards and high quality assessments and 5) establish data systems and use these to monitor students for improvement. I asked the administration to look into the possibility of custodians fitting into one of these categories. The response was not favorable by the bodies overseeing the distribution of stimulus funds.

This leaves us with the question: Where are the discretionary funds in the school budget? Answer: student services. Sports programs, after school transportation, out of class learning opportunities, the arts, foreign language classes, AP classes, and yes, increased classroom sizes. This is where you, parents, teachers, students and taxpayers can have some input. If you have any ideas to share, again, I encourage you to participate in the process and come to the meeting.

The final say on this will be Aug. 5 at 6 p.m.

Colleen Hamblen is a member of the Mat-Su School District school board.