ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / June 3, 2000

RESERVE – The St. John Parish School Board is pursuing the idea ofcontracting out its maintenance and custodial services.

The board voted Thursday night to allow the administration to shop around for proposals to outsource the maintenance and custodial services despite the cries of angry school janitors and maintenance workers who crammed the board meeting room to voice their opposition to the idea of outsourcing their jobs.

Most of the workers are convinced that if the school system administrators look elsewhere for janitors and maintenance, they will lose their jobs.

However, Superintendent Chris Donaldson opened the discussion on the issue by trying to allay the workers’ fears.

“This proposal is not an attack on our janitors or maintenance workers,” Donaldson said. “We are not asking for outsourcing right now. We are justlooking for permission to accept proposals. We owe it to the teachers,students and the taxpayers to at least look at our options.”Donaldson said several audits done on the St. John School System havesuggested that outsourcing janitorial and maintenance services could be more efficient and cost-effective.

He said the school board would never sign a contract unless the contractor agreed to hire all the school employees and give them the same salaries and benefits. Donaldson suggested that St. John Parish school employees mightbenefit from better training, services and supplies, not to mention better salaries and benefits.

Finally, he said the money the system saves on maintenance and janitorial services could be used to raise teachers’ salaries and attract more teachers to the parish.

Herman Clayton, president of the St. John Parish Association of Educators,said in effect the administration is using smoke and mirrors to get its point across.

“We have talked to our lawyers in Baton Rouge,” Clayton told the school board, “and they say no contractor can be forced to hire employees.”Clayton doesn’t believe an outside contractor can make money by hiring St.

John employees at the same salary and benefits.

“Everybody is talking cost-efficiency,” said Clayton. “The only way to do thatis downsizing.”Clayton focused on the administration and its accountability. He said threeyears ago the board was dissatisfied with the way maintenance was doing its job. It negotiated with the SJPAE, and it was agreed that custodial andmaintenance supervisors would not be part of the workers contract. Inreturn, the administration would train the supervisors in ways to make their workers more productive. Clayton said that training never came, but in threeyears maintenance and janitorial services improved anyway.

“Show me the problems today,” demanded Clayton. “Show me thecomplaints. The problem is not with maintenance. The problem starts at thetop with the supervisors.”He also said no contractor will match the benefits of St. John Parish, whichClayton considers the best in the state.

“Many of us are working for low or near-poverty levels. No contractor willoffer us more,” Clayton told the board. “Don’t let this pass further thanthis. Have the administration come up with a plan to do our job better.”The last time the school board outsourced janitorial services was in the early 90’s when it contracted with Servicemaster. The company ended up leavingbefore its contract was up because it couldn’t make any money and there were a lot of complaints about the work.

Jessie Oubre, maintenance manager for the school system, handed out a chart that compared maintenance work between Servicemaster and in-house maintenance workers.

For the school year 1999-2000 the maintenance department received 3,714 work orders and managed to complete 92 percent of them.

“The work is getting done,” said Oubre. “I’ve been polling the schoolprincipals, and I’m getting good results.”Betty Williams, a school employee for 27 years, put it succinctly,”I give you 150 percent. Please don’t take my job.”Board member James Madere told the audience, “We have to look at every option possible. We’re not looking to put anybody out of work, but we have tosee everything out there.”But Felix LeBouef countered, “When those kids failed the LEAP test, did we go and fire the teachers? We need somebody to come in here and show our people what to do.”C.J. Watkins said he doesn’t understand why the administration wants tooutsource in the first place.

“I haven’t had any complaints on the custodial services,” Watkins said. “I’massuming we are doing well.””The problem is not the custodians,” Watkins continued. “Accountabilitystarts at the top. If custodial supervisors are not doing their job, then thoseare the ones that should be fired.”Leroy Mitchell said if the administration wanted to use the audits as tools, why hasn’t the administration addressed the issue of manpower that was discussed in the audits.

“We should be dealing with people who don’t do their jobs,” said Mitchell. “I’mnot going to vote away responsibility.”Accountability was also the concern of board member Matthew Ory.

“We need to be accountable as a board,” said Ory. “We agreed to take yoursupervisors out of the bargaining talks and train them, and we didn’t.”Patrick Sanders said he believes the whole concept of outsourcing is unsound and asked that Donaldson remove the motion from the table.

“No one can tell anyone what can be put in a contract,” Sanders said, “so I am voting against the motion.”Gerald Keller and Howie Gendron both agreed they would never vote to hurt any school employee. They said that if outsourcing did become a reality, theywould make sure there was a clause in the contract that no St. John schoolemployee would lose his or her job.

Keller asked Donaldson if the administration had done any training of custodial management in the past three years.

Donaldson answered, “I can’t speak for the past three years because I’ve only been here for 11 months.”But Donaldson did say he will be implementing a plan that will hold all supervisors in support services accountable.

The motion to pursue the idea of outsourcing passed 6-5 with Mitchell, Watkins, Ory, Sanders and LeBouef voting against.

After the meeting, Clayton said the SJPAE is still going to fight the issue.

“We will get figures from other parishes who have outsourcing,” Sanders said. “We are going to figure out what the problem is.”

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