In actions that it acknowledged might appear to be “callous,” the WW-P Board of Education got its way twice in the last two weeks: On April 20, voters passed an austere budget, 2,862-2,667 (see story below). Then, on April 27, the board, acting with a “heavy heart,” according to board member Richard Kaye, privatized its custodial staff.
“Too little, too late.” That was the message the WW-P school board sent to the members of the WW-P Foreman’s and Service associations, who had submitted a proposal to save the jobs of their members a week before the board unanimously voted to privatize the work.
The board voted 9-0 on April 27 to award a two-year $9.2 million contract to Aramark to provide custodial, maintenance, grounds, and management services to the district — ending a seventh-month campaign by the in-house employees to save their jobs.
The cost to the district is $4.6 million each in the first and second years. According to a press release, the district’s supervisors will work with Aramark to organize services for each of the school and office buildings. The contract will go into effect on July 1.
The district’s current employees will complete employment for the remainder of this school year.
“Aramark will oversee the hiring of employees to work in the district, and all employees will be subject to fingerprinting and background checks,” the press release stated. As part of a contract approved earlier this month with the WW-P Service Association, the board approved a severance package for custodial and maintenance staff, for an estimated cost to the district of $275,000 to $300,000.
“Savings from Aramark have allowed us to lessen other reductions in the budget, along with careful planning for needed custodial and maintenance services,” board president Hemant Marathe said in the press release. Robert Johnson, board vice president and chair of the finance committee, added: “These outsourced services will bring us significant and sustained savings, which are vital to the health of the school district.”
The school board had called in a police presence in anticipation of the vote during an emotionally-driven meeting on April 27 in which employees shed tears and pleaded with the board to keep their jobs. Members of the union and one member of the public chastised the board for sending the message that the employees were hostile and that their attendance required police attention.
In an effort to instill faces on the issue, employees and union members lined up across the Grover Middle School cafeteria before the vote and took turns holding up pictures of the faces of employees who will lose their jobs to privatization, sharing tidbits of the individual employees’ personalities and financial and personal situations.
After speaking, one by one, they walked over to board members and placed the pictures on the table in front of them.
“Dashing the hopes and dreams and livelihood,” was the echoing sentiment among members, who portrayed their co-workers as hard-working people who cared about their jobs and the success of the district. The unions projected 120 in-house custodians and maintenance employees (the school district claims there are 105 employees who will be affected by privatization) will now lose their jobs.
Larry Weinreb, who has worked with the district for 18 years, told the board his wife lost her job in October. With privatization, “that will be both of us unemployed,” he said. “We will have nothing.”
Debbie Schwartz said she moved into the district in 1988 from New Brunswick so her son could get a better education and said she was appalled the district was considering laying off its custodians, which “is reprehensible and unconscionable.”
“My vote last week for the budget did not give you the right to fire our employees,” she said. The police presence was offensive because the employees were “just fighting to save their jobs,” she said. “That is detestable.”
The wife of operations foreman Scott Danberry approached the podium and began crying as she described her husband’s dedication to his job over the past 13 years. She described how he spent three days removing snow from the school grounds during a winter storm this past winter and how he would leave the house in the middle of the night to respond to the school in the event a fire alarm was triggered.
“You need him as much as we need you,” she said, as her husband came up to the podium to comfort her as she sobbed. He told the board that the district helped him purchase his home. “Please don’t help take my home away. I’ve been here; I’ve been dedicated.”
Jane Cormack, a district secretary, questioned the board whether anyone on the board had really taken a deep look into the unions’ proposal. She referenced the district’s E-mail blasts when the earthquake hit Haiti, urging the school community to keep in mind the members of the district “family” who had relatives or connections in Haiti. “What happened to being so concerned about our family?” she asked.
Sherri Bailey, a secretary at South, also pleaded with the board, first talking about the good reputation of the district, board, and its students. “From the bottom of my heart, I believe you have the opportunity to be heroes,” she said. “If any board can save their employees, I believe you can.”
Teachers also supported the custodians. “I, as a teacher, could not do my job without the custodians of Town Center school,” said Kathleen Schmidt. “They are not simply brooms and vacuums and mops. They are people, and they are important to our lives.”
Former school board president Dick Harbourt, a West Windsor resident for 55 years, was also moved to tears in speaking out against the move. He said he did not feel it was a difficult decision to make, as the board had claimed, because the proposal put forth by the unions was a “no-brainer.”
Privatization “would be a major step back for West Windsor-Plainsboro, and I will be embarrassed to be under your reign,” he said.
But the emotional plea could not outweigh the dire financial dilemma the district faces, said board members, who presented their own analysis (see chart) of the proposal submitted by the unions a week prior to the meeting.
While the custodians had projected to save between $2.13 million and $2.67 million through their proposed reorganization of the Buildings and Grounds department, the board’s finance committee said it found that their proposal would only save $435,730 over a two-year period — not enough to meet the $1.5 million the board needs to save in both this year’s budget as well as the next.
A study in September by Edvocate, the board’s consultant, found that the district could save a little more than $3 million over a two-year period through privatization. The board went out to bid for the work, received four bids, and found that the private companies offered 50 percent more in savings than projected by Edvocate.
The unions’ proposal was presented publicly in a two-hour detailed PowerPoint presentation to a crowd of about 75 people, mostly union employees, on April 21 at the Grover Middle School auditorium, a day after they presented the proposal to the board in closed session.
The board’s finance committee met over the weekend on April 25 to review the proposal to see whether it was viable and provided the savings after the upcoming school year.
Board vice president Robert Johnson and board member Randall Tucker, of the finance committee said it did not provide the sustained savings the board needed.
“During these long months of serious work by the board, we have waited for what we hoped would be a serious response from the unions,” Johnson said. “What we got were lawn signs, bumper stickers, lapel buttons, full-page ads, and flyers, all part of a pre-packaged campaign brought in from the outside.”
In addition to attacks on board members and scare tactics, including a threat that outsourcing would bring terrorists into the schools, Johnson said, board members also “heard calls for the school budget to be defeated.”
Board members studied the issue, visiting schools where privatization worked and did not work, Johnson said, and listened to community members outside the board meetings.
Finally, last week, the unions submitted a proposal. But, “what we got was too little, too late,” Johnson said. “Too little, because most of the savings identified in the proposal are either non-existent, or are one-time savings, when what the district needs are significant, sustainable, long-term savings.”
“Too late, because in effect, the proposal wasn’t a detailed plan, but an invitation to the board to begin negotiations,” he added. “No one with any good sense of reality, given the recent drawn out and difficult negotiations with these unions over the past two-and-a-half years, could seriously believe that a new round of negotiations over this proposal would result in an acceptable and timely alternative to outsourcing by the start of the next budget year on June 30.”
“We have to base our decisions on facts,” he said. “We have a level of benefits and compensation, and an organizational configuration, that are highly inefficient and unsustainable in face of serious economic conditions and a public demand that schools operate more efficiently.”
“Custodians work in the evenings while their supervisors work during the day doing nonsupervisory work that should be done by lower paid employees,” he added. “Productivity suffers greatly because of an overly generous number of paid leave days,” he said, adding that new employees get a paid leave entitlement of almost one full paid day off for every four days they work, in addition to seven bereavement days in the event of a death of a family member.
The Unions’ Proposal. In addition to pitching its plan, the unions also pointed out the unions’ perceived flaws with the Edvocate assessment as well as the invitation sent out to bidders on April 21.
The union looked at the bids — focusing on Aramark, the lowest bidder. They compared the services that would be provided by Aramark to those currently offered in-house.
The unions’ proposal included re-arranging shifts, cutting three foreman positions and four maintenance personnel, implementing zero salary increases for the next two years, consolidating the HVAC and electrician employees, and changing the work week for some employees.
The proposal broke down a list of savings (see chart) the unions estimated the district could save under their plan. The figures combine the savings from the re-organization of the Buildings and Grounds department as well as some of the givebacks included in the contract approved earlier this month.
Curtis Meissner, president of the WW-P Foreman’s Association, said he offered many suggested to Larry Shanok, the assistant superintendent for finance, and Russ Schumacher, the district’s attorney, in May, 2007, to help improve efficiency in the Buildings and Grounds department, but none were taken. “In fact, one of the assistant directors of Buildings and Grounds has been doing everything in his power to make the department fail,” Meissner alleged.
“No leadership, poor hiring practices, no discipline for contract or policy infractions” by the management “has been the cause for the department failure for the past five years,” Meissner added, referring to the Edvocate report, which stated poor efficiency as a reason to move toward privatization.
“This new plan would increase productivity through a partial team approach,” said Meissner. “The correct leadership would have to be in place for this to happen.”
“With this plan, the district would retain complete control of the more than $200 million invested in our schools,” Meissner added.
Marathe denied that district officials did not examine any prior suggestions.
The union’s presentation also questioned the qualifications the employees of a private company would have, and pointed out that the contractor will also outsource some of its work.
Susan Nardi, the NJEA field representative for the two local unions, also said that in the bid specifications, officials allowed for a 24-hour lapse in safety when it stated that an outside company can place a new employee into the schools for up to 24 hours before it is required to notify the district. “There are 24 hours where you have no idea who that person is,” she said.
They also pointed to the bids, which specify that the floors would be mopped, the recycling would be emptied, and the chalkboards would be cleaned, all on a weekly basis, less frequently than in-house employees currently perform these tasks.
Meissner and Nardi also distributed a stapled list of the work responsibilities of every position in house and compared them to the list of work Aramark would perform, which was significantly less in many areas. “Subcontractors must make a profit and pay taxes,” Meissner said. “In order to maximize profits, companies look to cut corners, resulting in decreased quality and quantity of services.”
Nardi and Meissner argued, among other things, that once the district decides to go with outsourcing, it is extremely difficult to go back to having in-house employees handle the work if problems arise. This is because districts lacking personnel are not in a position to terminate subcontractors with poor performance, giving the subcontractor the upper hand.
“You can’t hire 120 people back if you don’t like the service,” Nardi said. “There is no quick switch back; once you go into it, you’re stuck.”
The Board’s Analysis. Before the vote, board member Randall Tucker presented the findings of the finance committee’s review of the unions’ proposal.
He compared the dollar amounts projected to be saved by the reorganizaton proposed by the union to what the board estimated would actually be saved.
In some areas, the board estimated the same or greater savings than the union. By the district’s own calculations, cutting three operations foreman positions would save $283,815 — more than the $255,000 estimated by the unions in that area. When it came to the savings associated with cutting four maintenance positions, downgrading the assistant director to coordinator, and downgrading the maintenance workers to grass cutters, the estimated savings were on par with the union’s estimates.
However, the salary freeze agreed to in the recently approved contract as well as the givebacks of floating holidays and two NJEA days were savings already realized in the budget and could not be counted again to save the jobs, Tucker said. And, “the non-Buildings and Ground personnel floater days is not something that affects the Buildings and Grounds costs,” Tucker said.
Reducing substitute costs and Saturday overtime does not carry the credibility of any real savings, Tucker explained. “We currently have an average absentee rate after vacation and after holidays of over 20 days per individual within the buildings and grounds group,” said Tucker. “With that level of absentee rate, and the fact that there is a recommendation of cutting seven positions, we really don’t see how avoiding overtime on Saturday is sustainable or reasonable.”
With regard to the use of outside contractors, which the union proposed could be eliminated to save money, Tucker said the board does use contractors for special services like electric and plumbing, but “we really don’t see how we can avoid doing that, given our past operating history, the fact that we have high absentee rates in those areas, and the fact that they’re proposing elimination of positions in those areas.”
The board did put number values on the prescription and dental savings, but they totaled $11,500 for the first year and $30,600 for the second — totaling only $42,100.
The unions did not address the increase in benefits costs to the district, which were estimated at $192,000 and $292,000 for years one and two, respectively, totaling $484,000 in increases over the two-year period.
Retro increases also totaled $125,000 for each of the next two years, totaling $250,000, Tucker said.
“The fact that nothing was proposed in addressing the rising healthcare costs has to be taken into account,” said Tucker. “That is a theme that you hear across the state.”
In addition, the $1.5 million in savings estimated in the Edvocate study “accounted for a 3 percent increase for the first year of the contract we just negotiated,” he said. “It did not account for a second 3 percent increase. So, that represents a cost of $125,000.”
The union proposal also estimated that laying off the employees would cost the district between $670,000 and $1.2 million in unemployment costs, but the district has a self-insurance fund of $1 million that is not funded by taxpayer money, but rather paid into by district employees. So, the actual cost to the district, district figures estimated, is a one time cost of $200,000 to the district in addition to the one-time cost of $295,960 for severance.
In all, he said, the unions’ proposal only saves $258,315 in the first year and $177,415 in the second year, for a total savings of $435,730, while the Edvocate savings estimate a total of more than $3 million for the two-year period. And, the bids “came in at a 50 percent higher level of savings.”
The proposal “just doesn’t really come close to what we’re seeing from the outsourced company,” he said.
“This is not an easy deliberation, this is not an easy analysis, and this is not an easy decision for any of us,” Tucker said. “You may call some of us callous, but I could tell you, this is a decision each and every one of us has to take very seriously, and we take it with a really heavy heart.”
He said schools in this economic environment are not immune and that he had to make similar decisions in the private sector. “We’re looking for savings that are real, substantial and sustainable for a number of years.”
Board member Richard Kaye said that “this is the most difficult decision I’ve had to face other than personal issues in my own family.”
He said his grandfather was a union president and was “brought up in that environment,” but also realized the changing economy. He said he has had to weigh these realities over the course of his career as an educator, considering how to come through difficult budgetary problems by doing the least harm to the least number of people, including the students.
One of the factors he pointed was that there needed to be more than just a one-year savings. He said that the decision was “not casual.”
“No life is less important than another life, but at some point, we have this terrible moment of what do we do” when it comes to having no money. He said the board told the union it needed to save a certain amount of money or else it could not continue to operate the school system. “No decision about this is ever going to leave me comfortable,” he said. “It will leave me ill for a long period of time.”
Marathe said the decision came down to providing savings in the budget, which has been approved and includes $1.5 million in savings in the area of Buildings and Grounds. If it did not come from that area, it would come from somewhere else. “That somewhere else would be some other person,” he said.
He said the decision is made with great sadness. He picked up three of the photographs printed by the union members and handed to the board during public comment and specifically mentioned that he knew them. “It’s not an easy decision.”
Prior to the vote, a sea of signs reading, “Hear my voice…Say ‘No’ now!” saturated the audience. After the vote, some union members shouted angry comments at board members, who continued with the remainder of the agenda. Some cried. Others hugged and comforted each other. Cormack got up and shouted to the union members that she had black ribbons to distribute. “The dress code will now be black,” she told them.
