Maintenance Deferred

New Haven schools are suffering, but is Aramark to blame?
published: June 19, 2008
By Betsy Yagla

New Haven's older schools don't have air conditioning. Neither did the one-year-old Beecher School last week, which lost both its AC and its ovens. As temperatures soared above 100 degrees, technicians arrived to fix the air conditioning—and ended up shorting out the ovens. Students at the $40 million school were left to eat cold picnic lunches.

AC and other problems are occurring all over New Haven, and it's finger-pointing time when it comes to school maintenance. "The teachers were all complaining on Monday and Tuesday because they had no AC," says Rob Montouri, a Ross/Woodward school custodian and head of the custodians' union, Local 287.

Montouri blames Aramark—the Philadelphia-based company hired to oversee school maintenance in New Haven. Aramark picked out and installed the newer schools' high-tech, centrally controlled HVAC system, which has caused problems in several schools. Students and teachers freeze during the winter and sweat out the summer in classrooms with windows that don't open. ("Aramark has saved NHPS $100,000 annually by bringing HVAC contracted services in-house," says Aramark spokeswoman Karen Cutler.)

Aramark's been in New Haven for 14 years, running food service and maintenance, but this year NHPS custodians and cafeteria workers waged a months-long campaign asking the Board of Education to give Aramark the boot.

And it worked—at least for the cafeterias. Aramark will no longer oversee the schools' lunch program (it's going in-house this summer), but no decision has been made yet on the maintenance side. Aramark's $1.4 million contract has it overseeing city supervisors, coordinating contractors and ordering supplies like dust mops and toilet paper.

The current contract runs out June 30. The Board of Ed has interviewed two companies out of the four that bid for the job. Both bids under consideration are lower than Aramark's current $1.4 million maintenance contract, says Will Clark, the Board of Ed's chief operating officer. All options, including taking the work in-house, are on the table, he says.

Still, custodians are anxious to know if their—and the children's—situation will change in the next school year. Aramark's alleged mismanagement creates safety hazards, say the unions, for employees and students. A decision is expected next week, school officials say.

The unions are making one last push to rid their employees of Aramark management. Council 4, the AFCSME umbrella organization that oversees Local 287, is deploying union reps into New Haven schools to interview members to gather and organize complaints about the company. They'll use the data, they say, to present their case to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and school Superintendent Dr. Reggie Mayo. Or maybe, they say, they'll send it to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who's investigating the company after learning Aramark didn't share school lunch discounts with Detroit schools.

The union's valid complaints may not all be Aramark's responsibility. Some problems seem to be a result of a tight budget, and others can be attributed to flaws in new buildings.
Dead mice weren't removed from the High School in the Community cafeteria stockroom until a grievance process was resolved: There was a three-way dispute with Aramark, custodians and cafeteria delivery drivers about whose job it was to clean the stock room. Custodians and delivery drivers say it was the drivers' jobs, but the delivery drivers couldn't do it, they said, because their hours had been cut and they didn't have time. The drivers won their grievance and removed the mice.

At some schools, roof leaks are common: White ceiling tiles are stained brown from rain water. In those schools, custodians who tire of waiting for Aramark to call a contractor rig up elaborate make-shift drainage systems to avert leaks from ceiling lights. Others settle for buckets.
The way Aramark spokeswoman Karen Cutler explains it, Aramark's hands are tied when it comes to things like roof leaks: Aramark manages and oversees school maintenance, but they can't decide who fixes a roof, or even if it gets done. "It's up to the district to decide if an item gets fixed."

Sort of. The district creates the budget, but Aramark is supposed to oversee and manage that budget. During the first few years a school is open, leaky roofs and other problems are under warranty. Then, it's turned over to Aramark. So only older leaky roofs can be pinned on Aramark.

Another common complaint: When a custodian is out, only two hours of their eight-hour shift is replaced, but the same amount of work is required. They have to make a choice: Do they clean school toilets or mop floors in those two hours?

In an Oct. 17 letter to their union president, about 40 teachers at John S. Martinez complained: "We are writing to inform you of the health and welfare of the students and staff at John S. Martinez School." There was only one daytime custodian at the new, large school, and he couldn't do all his work in the time allotted. Teachers were sweeping their classrooms and cleaning their classroom bathrooms until the school was given an extra custodian. But in a tight budget year when city employees face concessions or layoffs, its unlikely custodians will be given extra hours, or new employees.

New Haven's new schools are gorgeous architectural feats of glass and soaring ceilings. But the Lexington Street "swing space," where children wait one or two years for their new school, feels neglected.

The parking lot curbs are crumbling from wintertime encounters with snow plows. Inside, the building is hot and humid and the hallway air feels stagnant. An oscillating fan buzzes in each classroom. Up the stairs, the second-floor exit sign is held together with masking tape, and exposed wires dangle from a wall where a fire alarm used to be. Down the hall, above the blue lockers, there are more exposed wires and an uncovered light bulb reachable by any jumping student. A classroom's broken window is covered with duct-taped plywood, and a crack is forming in a contiguous window. The boys' bathroom door and the cafeteria door are both missing door handles. If the door shuts, it locks everyone inside.

A custodian here says he's made several complaints that have gone unanswered. (Aramark's Cutler says there are only five open maintenance work orders at the swing space.)
School building czar Sue Weisselberg says some things may have to wait to be fixed, like broken glass. Aramark has a glass replacement budget and if it runs out, the glass will be fixed under the new fiscal year's budget that begins July 1.

Not everything, it seems, the unions are complaining about falls under Aramark's purview. If Aramark is ousted, the custodians may end up in a similarly frustrating situation with slow responses to work orders like broken windows. Things they long for, jobs that have been contracted out, like snow plowing and grass mowing at many schools, may or may not be given back to them.

But if the city were to take the job in-house, New Haven may save some money. Before Aramark came to New Haven, city management employees oversaw school custodians. They still do, says management union president Larry Amendola, but his supervisors are being supervised by Aramark: "It's a duplication of services."