Clarice Berry, president of the Chicago Principals Association, told a hearing of the City Council Education Committee that she was “terrified” of what would happen when the snows began, given the general disorder and incompetence associated with privatization of custodial services in the public schools. The city administration awarded a $340 million contract to Aramark, which proceeded to lay off numerous custodians.
“Let’s talk about staffing. That is horrific. A school with 900 kids with one custodian in the daytime? We have to collect breakfast. I’ve got assistant principals who are emptying garbage. I ‘ve got all kinds of situations. You cannot run a school with 900, 1,000 or 1,300 kids with one custodian in the morning and one at night. Just last week, we were told some of custodial issues will be taken care of. However, going from one custodian to two or from one to 1.5 is not gonna fix the problem.”
Berry then zeroed in on a four-letter word that sends chills down the spines of Chicago politicians: S-N-O-W.
“I am terrified. We have not had our first major snow in Chicago. What do we do when we’ve got one custodian servicing 900 kids, 12 inches of snow outside, salt that needs to be thrown out, hallways that need to be mopped so people don’t slip, garbage to be taken out, lunch rooms to be cleaned, toilets to be washed out with one, 1 1/2 or two custodians?” Berry said.
“You need bodies in a school…That [equipment] is wonderful if you’ve got a one-story school. But how do you get many hundred-pound equipment up to the third-floor? Most of our schools don’t have elevators…There are no mops, no buckets in the schools anymore. And we keep hearing, `You don’t need those mops and buckets.’ You need `em if you can’t get the equipment to the third floor. You need to have more people in a building.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh, but the numbers guys tell us by square footage that … I will repeat a little story about one custodian and snow in a school of about 450 students. I slipped on a wet floor one morning. The kids had tracked in snow that had melted and been tracked up and down the halls. The one custodian on duty trying to police the entire building got written up because the floor was wet! (He didn’t tell me until a few years later.) Give me a break! Not too long after that the Board floated the idea of outsourcing custodial services. Anyone in an elementary district knows the custodians are part of the building culture. They look out for the kids and the staff. Fortunately, both parents and teachers were equally critical of the proposal and the Board dropped the proposal. Not only is there a shortage of custodial help but strangers are wandering around these buildings. They generally are part time workers hired on an as needed basis, so they don’t last long, and they get moved around
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Anyone in an elementary district knows the custodians are part of the building culture. Yes.
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Rahm wants to destroy the public schools by strangling them with insufficient staff.
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And here’i Rahm-bo!
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“However, going from one custodian to two or from one to 1.5 is not gonna fix the problem.”
How many custodians were there before?
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This is what happens when money is more important than people. Politicians find money for pet projects but when it comes to children who can’t vote?
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I think this is a topic where historical context would be very helpful. What are the economics of custodial services in Chicago? What’s the full history that led up to the push to privatize custodial services in public schools? Is this privatization push a recent phenomenon or has it been happening for a long time? In NYC at least, the school custodian system was legendary for corruption, inefficiency, and administrative bloat, and everyone who wasn’t in the custodian’s union seemed to agree that contracting was the solution. What’s the history in Chicago?
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btw, when I say “was legendary” and “seemed to agree,” I’m referring generally back to what I remember from the 90s.
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The district claims it will save the itself 40 million over three years.
The district was running a deficit so they were looking to save money where they could.
The custodial privatization has been in Chicago for some time–over a decade. However, putting all custodial management under two firms is relatively new: Feb 2014.
I couldn’t find anything about the custodians being corrupt, inefficient, or the like. But Chicago is infamous for that kinda stuff. Whatever the case, it doesn’t appear to have anything do do with corruption or union thugs.
Aramark, in an effort to meet their economic needs, had to lay off custodians in September of this year. This caused Aramark serviced schools to go on custodial triage, and it is why the schools are getting terrible service.
Both independent surveys and administrators (not teachers) have voiced complaints with Aramark. It seems the second privatization firm that only services 33 schools is not having a problem–only Aramark serviced schools.
If only a small fraction of the teacher complaints are true (urine, blood, and vomit not being addressed promptly and cafeteria trash not being removed until Monday after a weekend), it looks like Aramark is the poster child for why privatizing is not always a good thing.
http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2014/09/08/66136/dirty-schools-norm-privatizing-custodians-principals
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cps-janitors-layoffs-20140914-story.html
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This is part of the history in NYC, at least, written by Diane in 1997. I don’t know how much the system here has changed, but I do know that investigators have unearthed fraud in more recent years, and that the “custodial engineers” (not the actual janitors with mops in the buildings) who manage custodial services still make more money than teachers, upwards of $140,000.
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Another story from the dark-arts CIRCUS of corporate public education reform where a Milton Friedman profit is god.
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People who have not worked in schools don’t get this at all.
Kids throw up too. That’s another one people forget about. And toilets get clogged. And there are mice. And there are assemblies that need chairs set. And heavy deliveries. Piano needs moved. Etc etc.
But people not in the schools don’t that.
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Tables need to be moved around for book fair. And set up for PTO dinners.
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Janitors are necessary in all schools. What good is eating healthy if the environment is dirty, unsafe, and unhealthy? DUH…anyone upstairs awake? This country us a mess.
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You would have thought Chicago would have learned it lessons with the outsourcing or parking meters..but no, they would love to out source everything especially public schools (ie charters!!!)
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sorry ‘of parking meters’
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We use to have three janitors and one engineer on duty every day, then four janitors at night to take care of the classrooms.
Now the engineer reports to the school two days a week and we have one janitor all day until about 1 pm, when two more come in to help clean the lunchroom.
Our bathrooms have not been cleaned in at least four weeks. My classroom floor has not been mopped or what ever they insist on using to clean the floors in at least four weeks as well.
Think about this: Breakfast is eaten in the classroom and at least once a week there is spilt milk. And shall we talk about the really cheap garbage bags we are given for the breakfast garbage? You might as well give me a bag with holes because that’s just what it looks like with the milk leaking out of what we are given.
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The custodian in our building will be retiring at the end of this school year, and he claims that a number of others through out the district will also be retiring. The building is under staffed, and there is a shortage of custodians through out the district. Human resources in not recruiting, and there are not enough that have the credentials to operate the boilers, especially in the old buildings. I think that districts should be doing their best to keep the custodians they have, and to encourage the trade. Hopefully no one is thinking about privatizing here. Maybe the district learned its lesson from the disaster of busting the bus driver union….
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Penny wise, pound foolish. Saving money by sacrificing sanitary conditions within a school is just plain stupidity.
The Buffalo Public Schools has a unique custodial situation which has continued for over 100 years. We have engineers at each building who are given a certain amount of funding to care for a the school school – purchase equipment, staffing, utilities, and other services. They are autonomous and do not answer to the principal. Extra work means extra pay, so even activities such as Open Houses give then an extra stipend. As you know, we get snow in Buffalo and they are responsible for plowing the parking lot and shoveling the walkways. And they also have to mow the lawns and maintain the grounds when “winter” is over. They are King! In order to move up the food chain and bid on a bigger school, which provides a bigger cache of funds to budget (anything leftover us theirs to keep), they must do their job. And they do. I’ve been in many schools, and most are well managed. There is plenty of staff, a day time crew and night time cleaners. Over vacations they buff up the entire building. I have to say, most of those engineers and the individuals they hire are great people who do their job competently. That’s not to say that the district wouldn’t like to move to a system like in Chicago to save money, but what we have now is so firmly entrenched that I think they’ve quit trying to change it.
Of course, after reading this blog, I have learned never say never.
Ellen T Klock
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That’s not a unique situation. That’s precisely the arrangement that NYC has had, and which drew such notoriety for corruption, poor performance, and bloat. See the quotation in my comment above.
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FLERP – it sounds like NYC has the same system as Buffalo, but it is still a unique method of maintaining school buildings not found in other NYS school districts. Perhaps being a smaller city we have less graft. Yes, the Engineers have complete control. Yes, they do their own hiring and sometimes they hire their relatives and friends ( among others), but nepotism doesn’t mean incompetence. Yes, they have a large budget. Yes, they have a strong union. Yes, engineers make money, but they earn it.
Because they get the job done. Buildings are clean, parking lots are plowed, lawns are mowed, chairs are set up for special programs and taken down, garbage is collected, bathrooms are washed, vomit is promptly removed, etc. Buffalo’s method is working a lot better than Chicago’s.
I have worked in numerous Buffalo schools, and there was only one which I considered below par, and even that situation was not all bad.
Our engineers take pride in a clean, well run building. It’s not always about the money. The good ones are considered part of the team, building relationships with students, faculty, and administrators. Some of them I’ve been proud to call friend.
There are many problems in Buffalo, school maintenance is not one of them.
Ellen T Klock
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When I first started teaching in Buffalo, several schools still had coal heat. The buildings were required to have a “fireman” to maintain the furnace and shovel coal. They finally all switched over to gas in the mid 1990’s.
One school was designed (cornerstone – 1976) by a southern architect who forgot that Buffalo had winter, so the boiler was placed in the “attic” after it was completed.
One school I worked at had guard dogs they let lose at night. And I heard some buildings had resident cats who were released after hours to catch the inevitable mice that came in from the cold.
What do they do in Chicago about the ants and/or rodents who are attracted to the leftover crumbs from breakfast? The teachers must have to “bus” the tables and sweep every day for their own sanity.
I wonder if that is a part of TFA training?
Ellen T Klock
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Let me tell you how it works when it snows…. Here at Utica Community Schools (located in Sterling Heights Michigan)…IT DOESN’T!!!!. We have a big mess with every snowfall. On days/nights when we have a good snowfall and several of the outsourced custodians call in sick, we’ve really got problems. Think about it…. Could you afford to put a car on the road if you earned $8.00 – $9.00 per hr?? If you’re honest the answer is probably NO. Well guess what…neither can they (they being the outsourced cleaning people). So what do they do you ask? It’s simple. Many of them ride in in one car (like a circus car). What happens when the driver calls in sick and he/she is the only one with a running car? You now have possibly 3-4 people calling in. Anyone out there that actually believes that outsourcing works is delusional. Don’t even get ne started talking about the other problems. Our superintendent (Dr Johns) made the biggest mistake ever made when she pushed the idea to outsource the support personnel at UCS. UCS Board of Education and Dr Johns….A monument of mismanagement.
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