While the members of the West Windsor-Plainsboro school board summarized the study its consultant has prepared with regard to the possible privatization of the district’s building and grounds staff, they claim they have not yet made a decision.
Outsourcing the workers could save the district $1.5 million, the report estimated.
Members of the union and its supporters continued to oppose the possibility during the board’s December 15 meeting, but the board held off a decision on the matter. Instead, it will hear more comment from the public, as well as board members themselves, during a special meeting scheduled for Tuesday, January 5. The board, however, is still not expected to make a decision at that time.
Rather, said Hemant Marathe, school board president, the next step after the public hearing will be a review by the finance committee. If the committee recommends to the board to go ahead with it, the board will have to decide whether or not to award a contract for the request for proposals to be written. But “there will be absolutely no decision made on January 5,” Marathe said. “It’s just for listening to the comments and discussion by the board.”
During the meeting, School Board Vice President Robert Johnson summarized a report by Edvocate, the board’s consultant and made a presentation on the findings.
According to Johnson’s presentation, status quo budget increases for next year’s school budget already total $7.8 million, which is higher than the amount allowed by the state.
He said the board decided to assess the building and grounds department because nearly 25 percent of the districts in the state have a contract for buildings and grounds functions. The board also looked at the fact that the department is considered a “non-core function.”
The assessment by Edvocate found that the public school average for custodial services was $1.35 per square foot of building. In WW-P, that cost is at $2.51. Custodial services costs public schools an average of $278 per student. In WW-P, that translates into a cost of $372 per student.
The study also found that in WW-P, there is a high cost of employee benefits plans for the workers with no employee contribution. Throughout the industry, plans are at moderate costs with employees paying a 35 percent contribution, on average. Buildings and grounds workers in the industry are given an average of 18 to 28 paid days off, compared with WW-P’s workers starting with 52 paid days off, up to 70 days, plus bereavement.
According to the presentation, increases for next year’s school budget come in the area of salaries, projected to increase by $3.25 million, and benefits, expected to increase by $3.2 million.
All together, increases are already at $7.8 million. The maximum increase allowed under the 4 percent state cap, however, is $5.3 million. Officials are hoping for a “more palatable” 2 percent increase of $3.1 million.
One of the issues Marathe discussed was the safety issue. Public comment over the past two months has focused on the possiblity of bringing “strangers” into the school district to replace the current custodial and maintenance staff. “Most of the board members have kids who attend the schools, so we are as much aware,” he said. However, “if we do decide to outsource, the outsourcing formula has more stringent requirements for background checks than we do. We have faced as many problems as we would with an outside firm. Anybody can simply ‘google’ the issue and find out if we had problems with our employees in the past.”
Marathe addressed other public comment that other districts have been dissatisfied with the companies they hired when they outsourced the work. “Even districts that have outsourced for close to 20 years have costs that are lower than our costs,” he said. “People can’t argue that after three to four years that our costs will skyrocket.”
In addition, he said, 25 percent of the state’s school districts outsource this work, “so it’s not that we are on the cutting edge of this evolution.”
Marathe responded to charges that have been made over the past two months about the value of the custodial and maintenance staff and the stories the board has heard about their good work. “We are not disputing that fact at all. Everybody needs to understand that when the state puts certain guidelines and procedures in place, we are the lower people on the totem pole, and we have to abide by that.”
Those guidelines mandate that school officials need to meet a 4 percent cap on their spending increases in this year’s budget.
Regarding the $1.5 million the outsourcing would save, “I use ‘potential savings’ because if we decide to go that route, until we get the bids in, we have no idea how much we will save,” Marathe said. “We do know how much we will spend because of the contracts in place, and we do know we don’t have that money in the budget. That is the bottom line. The board absolutely has to find out how to save anywhere between $2.5 and $4.7 million in next year’s budget.”
Controversy over the issue, which could cost over 100 of the district’s maintenance and custodial staff their jobs, began in October, when members of the union representing the employees obtained a copy of the report prepared by Edvocate.
Members of the New Jersey Education Association teachers union and also members of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Service Association and West Windsor-Plainsboro Foreman’s Association have been saying they feel the privatization is a sure move. As a result, they have shown up at school board meetings and even a council meeting in protest.
In addition, signs around the community with slogans like, “Outsourcing? Not with my money!” have popped up around town. Earlier this month, students at High School South chose to protest the issueas part of a lesson in civil disobedience.
