To the Newton School Committee
I just heard that the Newton Schools Dept may be considering outsourcing janitorial services at our schools. In case that’s true, I want to share a story with you:
I have a good friend named Brenda Anziano. She’s a principal of an elementary school in Fairfield CT, a town somewhat like Newton – i.e. an affluent bedroom community with a good school system.
Four or five years ago Brenda was a principal of a different school in Fairfield. The head of the school department approached her about moving Brenda to a different school in town. She had a great track record and they wanted her to take over at another school that could use her experience. Brenda had a single non-negotiable condition about making the move. She would only go if she could take her head custodian with her.
As Brenda tells it (approximately). “Working with the academics, teaching staff, curriculum – that’s what I do and I do it well. If the physical plant and maintenance has problems it can undermine everything we do, cause huge morale problems, upset parents and kids. I need some one I completely trust to be responsible for keeping the physical building running smoothly – because if it doesn’t I’m screwed and I can’t fix it.”
— Jerry Reilly – parent of a Newton middle-schooler
So True! I ran an international day event at my children’s elementary school for many years and the Custodian was the MOST important person to make sure that everything was set up and worked well.
If the Newton School Committee tries to go through with this plan, it will be among the worst – and most tone deaf – decisions they could make.
How much does this actually save? is this about the benefit/health care costs? Because unless the cost savings are massive, this sounds like a bad idea to me as well.
Here is a link to a report by a Consultant. http://www.newton.k12.ma.us/domain/80
Scroll down to: Consultants’ Report (March 2016) on NPS Custodial, Cleaning and Light Repairs/Maintenance Program
Full disclosure: I do not support outsourcing.
Great letter, Jerry! Thanks for bringing attention to this issue – I normally care very little about municipal political issues, but I’ll certainly follow this topic closely.
I’m astonished that the silly report referenced above by Councilor Sangiolo was ever commissioned – does anyone know how much that study cost? I scanned the bid website at http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/purchasing/current.asp but couldn’t find the final cost of the study.
In my opinion, it is one BAD study – poorly written, laughably stupid methodology, a lot of useless fluff data and a couple of pages of unsophisticated analysis comparing outsourcing and the status quo – all boiling down to a half-baked assertion that outsourcing could save over a million dollars by reducing custodians’ salaries by $16,951 each.
The company that produced it, “Core Management Services,” by all appearances seems to be a couple of brothers and their sons from West Podunk who serve as a front for the janitorial outsourcing industry (just my humble opinion). So I’m not sure what was the point of commissioning them to churn this out on a Friday afternoon, when their biased conclusions could have been predicted by anybody perusing their website (again, just my humble opinion).
Full disclosure: I’m a major supporter of the NPS custodial staff. I’ve worked in 5 schools and in each one, the custodial staff has been a life saver for the teachers, staff, and students and for that reason has earned their respect and support. The one complaint I’ve heard from supporters of this effort is that the custodial abstenteeism rate is 17%. My response is that this statistic is meaningless without clarity about what it means to be “absent”. Then I read in this report how the rate of absenteeism is calculated:
“The resulting absenteeism rate is therefore 14.5 / 85 = 17.1%. These absenteeism numbers include sick time, vacation, bereavement, personal time, workman’s comp, and FMLA.”
Vacation days, bereavement, workman’s comp, and FMLA are counted as absences? And custodians had better forget about getting the flu.
The report also states these benefits of having an in-house staff:
“In-house custodial programs provide several benefits – generally relating to the school district’s cultural issues. These considerations must be weighed against the program weaknesses when deciding upon the ultimate cleaning organizational design. In-house programs provide the following benefits:
Internal Control – Many in-house managers feel that they have more control over employees if they belong to the same organization
Program stability – In-house programs tend to attract and retain more long-term employees
Sense of community – Individuals that are employed by the school are more likely to have a sense of belonging to the community
Program continuity – Long-term employees provide a program with more consistency and continuity.
Repeat: “in-house programs tend to attract and retain more long-term employees” and “have a sense of belonging to the community”. Another way of stating these statements: the long-term custodial staff has a sense of belonging to the community and a commitment to Newton children.
Matt Hills and the School Committee have their own legal counsel. He’s paid to represent the School Committee when they do things like violate open meeting laws and illegally redact information from public documents. The current School Committee is so detached from reality, they use this same attorney to conduct their collective bargaining negotiations. It’s one thing to consult with an attorney during collective bargaining. It’s something entirely different when a group of elected officials abdicates their responsibility to negotiate in good faith, and hires an attorney to bust a municipal union.
This makes me sick. Who do we want in the place that cares for our kids – outsourced nameless faces with high turnover? or long-term staff who are part of the fabric of the school community?
I still want to read the report more carefully before I become the most hated person in Newton. I will put myself in the undecided camp, but you can guess how I am leaning.
Here is the counterpoint. NPS is a not a well-tuned business. I would rather have them focus on managing education not on managing custodians. The report presents grades of principals and comparison to other districts, from which I would conclude that the current custodial arrangement is less than stellar. The savings are about $1M per year, before pension and OPEB savings. My guess is when you add everything up it will be closer to $1.4M in savings. This is a lot of money. At $50K per new teaching, this translates into 28 new teachers.
If we currently outsourced custodial services would everyone be clamoring to switch to in-house custodians for an extra $1.4M per year? Would everyone be clamoring to switch to in-house custodians and balancing the budget by laying-off 28 new teachers?
I have been a huge critic of the school committee. My first reaction is that they deserve our support on this.
Jeffrey Pontiff,
I see your point, however I am not impressed with Whitsons, the NPS outsourcing for school lunch. There was a salad bar for a week or two at Angier years back, but it was never brought back for another run. The kids really liked it. I don’t find the fruit and vegetables any better than when NPS ran the lunch program. And now we are getting a new food services provider.
Is it better? Does it save money? And at what cost? To have zero flexibility with custodians, and to have people just “do their jobs” is not what I want. The school custodian that I see goes over and above her job and she is friendly and nice. The hotels didn’t have a good outcome when they switched to outsourcing, and I don’t have much hope for future outsouring at NPS.
Of all the places to look for cost savings, this should be last on the list. Custodians and anyone who deals directly with the children should be directly responsible to the school district, not some outsourced bargain cleaning service.
Furthermore, I am quite sure that we already pay custodians such that it is difficult to live in the community that they serve. We should be having a conversation about whether we want our workforce to be priced out of our community, not about whether we can find cheaper labor.
Members of the Newton Democratic City Committee have overwhelmingly and unanimously voted – probably the most united they have ever been since I have been involved – to oppose outsourcing NPS custodial jobs.
The consultant’s report referenced by Amy and Jane report is shocking. To me it reads like a Bain Capital document; slash wages, slash benefits … for what? That the term “absenteeism” would be used to describe the appropriate use of benefits like accrued vacation time or sick days by custodians is terrible. Our city, with all of its resources, can and should do better.
Please join me and members of the NDCC at the June 20 School Committee meeting at 7:00 pm where we will present a petition opposing the effort to outsource custodians.
So here we are, liberal, progressive Newton, outsourcing our workers. Lunch ladies, and now custodians. Hey, save a buck here, save one there. Out of a $211 million dollar budget the city of Newton will toss out 85 employees, save about $1 million(maybe), and replace them with lower pay alternatives.
Will we get better service? Probably not.
Isn’t this just the type of thing Bernie Sanders was talking about? The average salary we are talking about is $65,000; and we feel we are paying too much? Who is helping to kill the middle class now?
We may want improved productivity, and perhaps some of the schools are not being cared for at an appropriate level; that sounds like a change is needed in supervisory oversight.
But, we are just looking to save some money, nothing wrong with that; but it always seems to be those closer to the bottom of the economic ladder than the top are targeted first.
I see this nothing short of shameful. I am embarrassed that a school committee in the city I live would target these groups of employees to show evidence of cost containment on their part.
@Jeffrey –
Yeah, by reducing custodians’ salaries by $16,951 each! Gee whiz, what magic!
@Shawn –
I’ll agree that it reads like a Bain Capital document in spirit, but in quality it reads more like an eighth-grade term paper. Kudos to the school committee for getting fleeced and wasting our money on this nonsense.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Let’s assume that there are real potential cost-savings with out-sourcing. Those cost-savings come from somewhere, and it isn’t from abstract notion of “efficiency.” It’s from reducing total compensation to janitorial staff.
Are we citizens? Or, are we taxpayers?
We are both, and there is a tipping point. I don’t know exactly where the tipping point is, but trying to become more efficient on the back of janitors is well past the tipping point.
This is typical in corporate business to beat down the workers, and leave the fat cats at the top of the food chain to continue their binging with high salaries, and extra perks.
There are plenty of other places to start the process, and it says a lot (and nothing good) about a school committee that would engage an consultant specifically to target janitorial staff; to show they are serious about keeping the budget under control.
Is this really the worst and most glaring inefficiency in the school system? So they degrade the workers, with a report saying they do a lousy job, and then tell them, we can replace you by paying less.
This is a side of Newton, that is so hypocritical to what Newton supposedly stands for. I am embarrassed, again .
This is nothing new, it seems, every time it comes down to a real issue about treating workers fairly, the public turns its back on those who we hire to provide service to our community.
First of all, I’m all for the school committee kicking the tires on ways to save money. Jeffrey is correct that this is about hard choices, especially as budgetary limitations kick in. If the choice is binary, I pick teachers over higher paid janitors.
But…the choice isn’t binary.
1) My kids have gotten to know the head custodian at Cabot, one of them quite well. Something will be lost in the translation to the outsourcing. Lower paid staff will mean higher turnover and less connection to a school.
2) Well-maintained buildings last longer. Custodians are the first line of defense in maintaining a building. Principals know this, hence Jerry’s letter. That has a cost as well.
I appreciate the moral and political aspects of this as well. But I wanted to respond to Jeffrey’s comment without those issues, even if I agree with other posters. Questioning the status quo isn’t being the devil, even if I don’t agree the status quo should change.
@fignewtonville: This was a hatchet job. You knew what it was going to say, the moment you hired that consultant.
“higher paid janitors”; you realize you are talking about an average salary of $65,000. i understand everything is relative, and while it is higher than the suggested 15% cut to $55,000; it isn’t exactly “high paid.”
In order to have well maintained buildings you have to invest in the staffing and equipment. I know of school buildings with furnaces out dated, inefficient, being held together with ingenuity. Admittedly, this was 15 years ago. but understand,, our current charter actually puts a cap on the amount of money that can be allocated to routine maintenance. It should be the other way around, there should be a mandatory minimum spent on maintenance.
The worst maintained building is the Ed center, where all the admin are. Don’t they realize they have a cleanliness problem?
Please note: buried in this report: Note that some of the cost savings would be offset if the contractor added additional staff (recommended).(pg 23)
There is an under-staffing which results in much of the problem; it is right there in the report.
You can always pay less, lets hope your boss doesn’t wake up tomorrow and figure the same thing out.
Neil:
You might want to reread my post.
A few points:
“higher paid janitors” vs. “high paid”: I understand the point about a living wage, and my post was in favor of the current situation. But you are implying that my post was describing the custodians as “high paid” when I was doing nothing of the sort, I was making a comparison between lower paid outsourcing and higher paid direct hires. Comparison language vs descriptive language. Hence the “er” after high. Higher paid. Your post implies a value judgement regarding custodian salaries on my part.
“Maintaining the buildings”: My point was not about proper maintenence budgets. My point was that a long employed custodian will be able to inform maintenance crews regarding water and electrical issues that need fixing immediately. He or she knows his school. They aren’t a replacement for major maintenance budget, hence my “first line of defense” comment. Folks in property management have learned this well, and better buildings push for longer term employees even if some of the basic janitorial staff is outsourced out. I’d rather keep what we have.
My post is focused on replying to the monetary concerns of those focused on the budget. I understand the emotions about living wages and fair wages and outsourcing, but generally the best way in my view to challenge an argument where your opponent is focused on budget savings is to address the less emotional aspects first.
Finally, happily I’m my own boss for the most part, but I’ve been let go from plenty of jobs in my life due to cutbacks, downsizing, outsourcing and a general dislike of my being a wiseass. You can always pay less, but you also get what you pay for. My post was to encourage Newton to focus on what we get with the current staff is worth paying for.
@Neil:
I expect that the Charter Commission recommendation will dispense with that particular provision. So hopefully that issue will be rectified soon.
@fig– You either believe in the right of municipal workers to unionize, or you don’t. You either believe in collective bargaining, or you don’t. This issue is not about money. It’s about arrogance and power. Look at Matt Hills track record. He used this same outside counsel to defend the School Committee against Open Meeting Law violations. Then he used that counsel to make the bogus legal argument that redacted most of the investigator’s report on the anti-semitic incidents in Newton schools. Now Hills is using this attorney as a hatchet man to try and bust the custodians union. Hills has refused to negotiate in good faith, and the first thing his attorney did was demand the union accept the premise that the School Committee has no obligation to negotiate with them. If this were about money, we should all be asking how much we’re paying in ridiculous legal bills for the School Committee.
When did any efficiency expert, outside consultant say? “Sorry but spending less money will not solve your problems; in fact it will add new ones and the collateral damage will be enormous. In the end it will cost you more to solve the new problems you will encounter.”
The SC hired Core Management Services LLC, which is a foreign limited liability company using a POBox in the city of Endicott, New York where Anthony Maione is Owner and President and has as its Corporate Parent Maione Consulting, Inc. It only deals with custodial services and is a champion at “outsourcing” (or union busting) all over the country.
The SC got what they wanted – a report to use to justify firing 85 custodial union employees, including how to overcome the resistance to “relinquishing the management, training, supervision, oversight and execution of the cleaning tasks to an outside firm.” It mentions several times in the body of the report that losing that control creates problems without any indication of how and at what cost those problems will be solved. It says to convince the resistance that the money saved will be used to create a better learning experience. The money they say will be saved will be spent to pay for the additional custodians and solve all the problems created by an outside control.
I think the report is lacking any proof that paying a private company to supply cleaning services would save the large amount of money they claim and do wonder how much it cost to keep from participating in collective bargaining with the union reps for the 85 custodial employees who want to continue earning a living wage with benefits. I’ll save my moral and loss of community objections for another post.
On a somewhat related note, the Boston Business Journal posted an article today on the “The towns and cities with the best-paid teachers in Massachusetts in 2015.” Newton is listed with an average teacher salary of $75K. It doesn’t show where that ranks overall in the Commonwealth. There is a slideshow with the top 20 highest salary averages. Needham is 20 on the list, with an $87K average salary.
Here’s a link to the article: http://goo.gl/MmfXaz.
@Bryan: I really hope you replace it with a minimum expenditure on maintenance. According to that consultant report on janitorial services, our brand new high school is not even being kept up to expected standards; not to mention all the other schools. Equipment, etc. At the end of the day we have a long history of spending too little on upkeep. Unless we force the department to spend a certain amount minimum, they will always cut that budget, to try to keep money in the system for other “more direct” services. Understandable, but we must prevent that, as we have seen in the long run, it ends up costing us so much more.
My mother is a custodian, as well as several other close friends for the Newton Public school system . They are not just people that go around and clean up after people . They are people that build relationships and friendships with staff, faculty and students as well. Outsourcing would be a complete joke and waste. These are people that actually care about your children and their well being and by taking them out of that position your taking away a huge asset to the school department . They already outsourced the food service and look how that turned out.
Back the Broom say no to outsourcing !!!
I’d like to know what the hiring and screening process will look like for the individual janitors who will come into contact with my 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter each day. Will these individuals be CORIED? Who will be charged with selecting the new employees? Will teachers, faculty, parents have a voice in who comes into close, daily contact with our kids?