Though not everyone was ready to hand out an A grade to the new outsourced custodians serving the WW-P School district, the school board authorized a one-year contact extension with Aramark, the firm that provides the custodians.
At the January 24 meeting, the board voted to approve a one-year contract extension with Aramark for $4.8 million — reflecting a 2 percent increase.
Whether Aramark deserved the raise became a hot topic for public comment. “Before Aramark, when the district had its own custodial staff, the building was always spotless. Now we have to tell them, and they do clean as asked, but you shouldn’t have to remind them of basic things,” says Karen Sorenson of Princeton Drive in Plainsboro.
Sorenson, who has lived in the area for more than 15 years, has seen the custodians in action as a parent and as a school employee. Her three children have attended WW-P schools, with her oldest now studying at Rutgers while her twin sons are in their freshmen year at High School South.
She also spends a great deal of her time inside district schools, working as an instructional assistant for special education at Millstone River School. She took issue with the instant renewal of Aramark’s contract.
“The room I work in is covered in filth,” she said.
At the school board meeting Sorenson spoke about instances where there was soap on the floor of bathrooms or no soap in the dispenser, prompting her to leave signs for Aramark staff to replace soap and toilet paper in bathrooms and paper towels and other supplies in classrooms.
Sorenson spoke about an incident at Millstone River where she believes an Aramark cafeteria worker “may not have understood what they were doing,” which resulted in an injury. She said the worker scrubbed the floor of the freezer room without putting up a wet floor sign. A cook later walked into the freezer and fell down, and Sorenson said the cook needed to be taken to the hospital.
Sorenson also mentioned a continuing occurrence of a special education student who “coughs all day long,” leading her to believe that their environmental situation needs to be examined. She also said that at no point had she seen any of the board members coming into Millstone River School and observing the cleanliness (or lack thereof).
Her point was challenged, however, by board member Todd Hochman and others who told her not only were they not permitted to enter a school building during school hours, but they have day jobs to attend to and it was unlikely that, as with most parents, they would be in a school during the day.
Before Sorenson’s comments two members of the board were not eager to endorse the contract extension. Board member Ellen Walsh pointed that the contract does not expire until June 30, and she questioned board member Tony Fleres, chairman of the finance committee, as to why the entire board was not given more details on Aramark’s performance in school maintenance.
“We were only given a one-page summary with a comparison of a period last year and a period this year. I am not comfortable, and I think we should have a chance to study this and ask more questions,” Walsh said.
She says in review of their latest evaluation from December, 2011, Aramark got only an 81 percent score compared with 90 percent they received in August. Shanok explained that typically ratings are higher in summer months when the buildings see the least use, and they go down in months like May and December when there has been consecutive school wear and tear.
Walsh made a motion to pull the resolution from the agenda, which was seconded by Hochman, but their request was denied by a vote of 6-2. When it came time to approve Aramark’s contract Hochman changed his stance and voted it for it while Walsh abstained from the vote. The contract extension was approved by a count of 7-0-1.
Fleres said that when the contract went out for bid two years ago Aramark was the lowest bidder by far. The 2 percent increase was negotiated by the board’s finance committee, and Fleres explained that current state guidelines give school districts the ability to raise the amount of such a contract, based on inflation, by a maximum of 2.5 percent. He said the 2 percent increase was justified.
“As far as quality of their work, we did a very detailed inspection before they arrived and updated it over the two years. I believe their service is satisfactory as I have not heard any complaints, and I think that has a lot to do with the Aramark staff,” Fleres said.
Board Secretary Larry Shanok agreed with Fleres’ comments and said it would not be beneficial to the district to put out another request for proposal and seek another bidder at this point. Shanok insisted that the board valued the evaluation made by Edvocate School Support Solutions, a Toms River-based company the district hired to monitor Aramark’s professional services.
“As hard-nosed as Bill Gerichter (president of Edvocate) is about it, his professional assessment of the report we shared with the board is that Aramark has improved a great deal and is doing a good job, which is why we were very interested in locking this up. If we say it’s not a done deal, Aramark could be courteous and allow it go or they walk away,” he said.
The extension goes into effect July 1, and the district’s original contract with Aramark on July 1, 2010, allows for three one-year extensions.
At its January 24 meeting the board also approved travel expenditures for a district secretary to attend training related for “school dude” software programming in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, from March 17 to 21 at a cost of $1,600, and for a purchasing specialist to attend the three meetings of the Governmental Purchasing Association of New Jersey.
The joint transportation agreement between WW-P and the East Windsor Regional School District, originally approved on July 26 of last year, was adjusted to reflect three additional students and an increased revenue of $2,697.24.
Bus contracts were awarded for two High School North student trips. One went to Rick Bus Company for the Model UN trip to Baltimore ($695 for one bus) and the other to George Dapper, Inc. for the Academic Decathalon trip to Clifton High School ($660 per bus for two buses).
Change orders were approved in the general construction contract of Performance Mechanical Corp. for the boiler replacement at Wicoff Elementary School. Additional valves and piping must be installed in accordance with state regulation, but they are covered under an allowance cost of $830. Due to the remaining unused allowance balance of $7,845 the contract amount has been decreased from $286,252 to $278,407.
In personnel decisions, the board took the following action:
— Gerald Pinner has been reappointed as a second grade teacher at Wicoff Elementary School as he is set to returns from a leave of absence on February 17. His prorated salary will be $53,010.
— Antonella Vescuso, a Spanish teacher at High School South, will be temporarily appointed as a guidance counselor to fill in for Brooke Parrott, who will be on leave from February 13 until the end of the school year.
– The district has hired Oksana Kessous as a certified substitute teacher for $90 per day.
– On January 20 Special Educational Instructional Assistant Jeffrey Fisher resigned from the district. He is replaced by Bhagyashhri Waghulde and Brianne Teichmann, who will each work 3.5 hours a day at a rate of $17.22 per hour.
– Starting February 8, Diane Basile will serve as a substitute instructional assistant and substitute cafeteria aide at Maurice Hawk.
– Samantha Tognela of High School North will receive a prorated stipend of $6,429 for her role in special services as lead child study team member.
– A stipend of $3,792.32 will be awarded to Christopher Petrone, boys’ JV lacrosse coach at High School South. Meanwhile, board member John Farrell will continue as boys’ lacrosse coach as an unpaid volunteer.
– Eleven teachers will receive pay of $47.09 per hour for homebound instruction extra duty they performed in January. The list includes the following High School North educators:
Laura Cobb, language arts, not to exceed six hours; Christopher Bond, social studies, not to exceed six hours; Julie Norato, science, not to exceed six hours; William Scarpitta, math, not to exceed six hours and Tammy Petrocelli, driver’s ed, not to exceed 15 hours.
High School South educators included Bonnie Brienza, AP calculus, four hours; Szlilivia Fejes, French V, four hours, and Maureen Leleszi, consumer economics, four hours.
Other teachers covering homebound instruction were Grover Middle School’s Kurt Wayton for language arts and math; Lauren Petersack of Maurice Hawk for IEP goals and Melissa Collins of Wicoff Elementary for reading, writing, math, social studies and science.
