School Debates Between Contact Cleaning And In-House Staff

Contract custodians at Durham Public Schools in North Carolina would prefer to be employees of the school district, according to an article on the Herald Sun website. The custodians are currently employed by Premiere, a subcontractor of Service Solutions, which holds the $7 million-a-year custodial contract with Durham Public Schools.

The school board is exploring options to either outsource all custodial services, move all custodians in-house or continue with the hybrid model now in use. Custodians cited better medical benefits, better pay and more paid time off as reasons for wanting to become DPS employees.  School principals requested then that custodial services be outsourced so that they would not have the responsibility of hiring and managing workers or ordering and buying cleaning equipment and supplies.

Currently, about 33 full-time custodians and two part-timers remain on the DPS payroll. The remaining 294 full-time and part-time custodians either work for Service Solutions or its subcontractor Premiere.

A consultant for the school district, Core Management Services LLC, found that highest cost-savings are realized when the custodial services are fully outsourced. Core Management issued a two-phase recommendation to the district.

The first phase includes working with the contractor to produce a “full-disclosure program pricing workbook” to give the district an opportunity to collect good data before deciding which program model to use for custodial services.

As part of the second phase, the consultants recommended:
 • Using the workbook to negotiate a new contract with the current management company.
 • Using the findings in this assessment to conduct a comprehensive custodial RFP process.
 • Or, transitioning to an in-house program, adopting K-12 custodial management best-practices.

Read the full article here.