Everybody Loses

Privatization Threatens District Jobs and School Spirit

By Dave Arnold

Privatization is deadly. Regardless where you live, your school district size or job classification, if you're not taking the threat of privatization seriously you may be fooling yourself out of a job.

Privatization is not only lethal to school district jobs, it can kill the very spirit of a school community. Some school districts realize the problems that accompany the privatizing of Education Support Professional (ESP) jobs. They value the commitment that ESP bring to local schools, neighborhoods, shopping areas, and religious institutions.

About 75 percent of ESP live in the school districts where they work. Privateers punch in and punch out without contributing much to the spirit of a school. Many ESP develop caring relationships with students, teachers and other school staff. This often takes more time and years than privateers care to contribute.

Being Fool-hearty

Unfortunately, too many fool-hearty decision makers look at only money issues. Some school district administrators consider privatization as an option that might alleviate their finical woes. They often overlook the following:
Privateers are known to “lowball” operating costs. After the first year fees often increase as the need for profit increases.

• Costs for transferring authority from the district to a contractor (legal fees, for example) are often overlooked during negotiations.
• Training new employees is sometimes unanticipated
• Loss of ESP jobs increases local unemployment costs
• To maximize profits, contractors lower the quality of services

In my school district in Brownstown, Illinois, we never felt threatened by corporate workers. First, we knew they couldn’t replace us. Second, we believed the subject would never come up. Well, it did.

The suggestion came up after a former superintendent took office. He knew our fleet of school buses was ailing and in need of replacement. His idea to save money was to sell our buses, fire our drivers, and hire a contractor to supply buses and drivers.

Dishonest Record

Fortunately, our school board had the good sense to check out the history of the busing company that the superintendent was eyeing. Their track record clearly showed that they had a history of providing a good service to get their foot in the door, but after that came the whammy.

The company would increase their rates severally once the school district was rid of their old buses and drivers, and at the mercy of the contract company. Our school board also had the good sense to get rid of that superintendent.

Privatized services are attractive to school boards for one reason: money. Since the employee is hired and employed by the private contractor, these employees don’t reap the same benefits as NEA ESP do from negotiated contracts.

Subcontracted employees have only federal and state labor laws to protect them. Often, they are willing to work for whatever wages the employer offers them. This arrangement does not inspire loyalty. These employees, being of sound mind, will walk away as soon as the next best offer comes along.

Poorly Trained

In addition to the loss of employee loyalty, it has been my experience that contract employees are poorly trained.

A while ago, several young men broke into our school and discharged every fire extinguisher in sight. The clean up was far too big of a job for our custodial staff. The insurance company called in a well-known custodial service company. The company brought in 30 employees who cleaned up the extinguisher powder, which took about 36 hours.

We thought they had done a good job, until I caught one employee attempting to clean our gym floor with a polyurethane floor finish rather than a floor cleaner, which would have done extensive damage to the floor coating. The employee had no clue what the difference was between the two items. I brought this to the attention of our superintendent and the company was instructed to stay off the gym floor.

Careless Service

When my neighbor had a house fire, his insurance company called in the same nationally known service company to clean his house. They worked at the clean up for about a week. Afterwards, my neighbor invited me in to see the remodeling he was doing before moving back in.

I noticed that the cleaners only cleaned what they could reach without a ladder. Smoke and soot still remained on everything above the six-and-a-half foot level. It gets worse.

Two weeks later, my neighbor came home one evening and found his home burglarized and large screen TV missing. The only people who knew he owned the TV were his family, the contractor-cleaners, and I. The police don’t consider his family or me to be suspects, though the cleaners are still being investigated.

School boards usually consider the cheapest options during times of monetary hardship.

ESP need to be prepared to launch a counterassault by supplying the school board with facts about a private contractor’s record of poor service.

Quite simply, you get what you pay for. Each and every ESP is the best person for the job they perform. This is why they were hired in the first place.

(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NEA or its affiliates.