The Harvard school district has terminated its cleaning contract with the Durkin Company of Billerica and will return to using staff custodians, Superintendent Linda Dwight told the School Committee earlier this week. Because the contract was due for a yearly renewal June 30, there is no penalty for ending it.
Dwight said she had learned that contrary to its agreement with the district, Durkin was subcontracting the nighttime cleaning work to another company. Also contrary to its earlier assurances, Durkin did not provide benefits to many workers.
Dwight told the School Committee she had asked Peter Rowe, the school business manager, “to see if we could bring back our own staff at the same cost” as the Durkin contract. The school budget for fiscal 2019, which was drawn up to include that contract, showed an estimated $523,488 for Durkin’s custodial services. Returning to in-house staff is expected to cost $522,013, according to Rowe’s figures.
When the district laid off its own custodians in May 2016, Dwight said, the goal of outsourcing was to achieve a higher level of cleanliness in the school buildings; it was not about cost. In that respect, she said, the change was a success, because the buildings have been cleaner over the past two years than they were before, despite problems with the company. She said starting from this higher level should allow the new staff to keep the schools in good condition. “We are setting high expectations from the beginning for cleanliness,” she said.
Dwight is planning for a staff of seven custodians, the same number that were laid off in 2016. Four of those workers have been hired. Marcia Gaudette and Nick Ladislau have previously worked on cleaning crews at Bromfield, and Zach Duffen was the day porter at Hildreth Elementary. Peter Walsh is moving to the custodial staff after working at the Bromfield cafeteria.
One unexpected cost in using Durkin’s personnel was snow removal. The company used a separate group of workers and charged Harvard by the inch of snowfall. The resulting costs were $65,000 in fiscal 2017 and $56,516 in fiscal 2018. Dwight told the School Committee she thinks there will be some savings in using full-time staff to clear the schools’ walks and parking lots.
Dwight acknowledged that although the cost to the schools will be about the same as with Durkin, the cost to the town will be somewhat higher, because employee benefits are covered in the town budget, not the school budget. “But we think the benefits outweigh the liabilities,” she said.
Jon Snyer, who replaced Mark Force as school facilities director in May, will oversee the custodial staff, Dwight said. He will work flexible hours so that he is sometimes at the school during the evening shift. “We were late catching on to the fact that [Durkin was] outsourcing the night cleaning to another company” because of problems with evening oversight, Dwight said. The Durkin crew was expected to clean from about 6 p.m. to about 10 p.m.
