I strongly urge the District 200 board to reconsider the idea of privatizing, or outsourcing, custodial services for the high school. It strikes me as the wrong direction for several reasons.
Two of the four bids received were higher than the estimated costs, with benefits, for the permanent staff. Given the large gap between that and the low bid ($1.1 million), I doubt if the bids are apples to apples. I suspect the low bid, when clarified, will be much closer to what we currently pay for fulltime employees. So there likely is limited, if any, economic benefit. And there are most definitely are costs.
The second reason I urge reconsideration is that this sends the wrong message, to our kids and for us as a community. We should support good, reliable public employees with a secure job, not create new clients for unemployment benefits, especially in this economy. Not everyone graduating will attend college and certainly the custodial work, while not glamorous, has value. Privatizing sends yet another message to those not headed for college. Don’t count on any job at all to last – financial types will always find a way to undercut your wages.
It likely also means the person waxing the floor takes home less, and they likely get nowhere near the healthcare benefits. If the bids are close to the same that means the administrative costs are higher. The private company has to factor in the cost of advertising and taxes, money that would go to permanent employees’ wages and benefits. That money leaves our community. The overhead paid on top of wages to our staff custodians includes money that flows through other D200 employees, who administer the benefits, training, payroll, etc. of its employees. With privatizing, both wages to the employee and overhead money that support other D200 employees’ jobs is shipped out to where? Right now, much of the overhead funds also stay in here, since many D200 administrative employees are also part of our community.
That raises my greatest concern, as a parent. My youngest son, in elementary school, goes to the high school three evenings a week for wrestling practice. Our oldest will start in the fall and will likely have one or more after school activities. We typically see one or more custodians cleaning up the school when we’re there in the evenings. They’re sometimes the only D200 staff there, and we’re comfortable with that and with them. Our permanent custodians are part of the institutional memory of the school. They are invested in the place; they develop a history. If you privatize, what do we really know about that janitor late at night there with our kids? Sure, they do background checks, but where’s the accountability? With a permanent custodian, the kids know who he or she is and, importantly, who their boss is.
I do not support the policy of outsourcing custodial services at the high school. There is no strong economic argument for it and several good reasons not to do it. Please reconsider and do not go ahead and award the contract.
Eric Davis is an Oak Park Township trustee.