Poor Cleaning Report Card Results In Millions For School Contractor

Chicago Public School (CPS) officials are giving $259 million in additional work to Aramark, despite recent poor school inspections. According to Chicago Sun-Times reports, the Philadelphia-based contractor will be given control of all facilities work at most of Chicago’s schools on July 1.

The cleaning contract stipulates that the company will oversee cleaning the schools, pest control, landscaping and other tasks that, in the past, typically have been overseen by the school's engineer.

Aramark has managed the cleaning of hundreds of Chicago schools since 2014 — including all 125 that CPS inspected from December to February and found with serious maintenance problems. Only 34 of the schools passed those cleanliness examinations, the Sun-Times reported last month.

CPS officials say putting one contractor in charge of overseeing all of the facilities services will better ensure that schools are clean and safe, versus having Aramark handling just cleaning and having overall authority for school facilities divided, the article said.

Aramark was responsible for cleaning at the schools that were checked during those surprise inspections but not for other facilities work.

School system leaders say they have put measures in place to hold Aramark more accountable. Among them, the contractor will be required to survey principals twice a year, rather than once, and to make monthly reports of any complaints or inquiries from the public, according to its contract, which took nearly a year to work out.