Latest report from AAPLE, an organization of Chicago school principals.
Principals say the cleanliness of their buildings is integral to students learning and note that they are naturally held accountable for it. However, under the new contract, principals do not supervise the custodians at all. Some principals say the custodian managers turnover on a regular basis.
“The person who supervises them comes once a week,” says one principal, who did not want to be identified. “That is just not going to work.”
That principal of a Northwest Side school said that at the end of the school year the custodians assigned to her school left urine in the toilets for weeks. Then, they moved furniture out of a classroom, but broke things when they brought it back in. Her building is more than 100 years old and she says that when it gets dirty it is hard to get clean.
A big complaint of the principals is that staff has been laid off or reassigned at bad times, leaving someone new to take over at crucial moments. One principal said his custodians told him they had been notified that they will be laid off two weeks after school started.
Another had all his custodians sent to new buildings for no apparent reason. “The (ones who were reassigned) were custodians who knew the building, knew the children, knew the community,” he says. “They did not want to leave.”
Two of them were reassigned the Friday before school started. “That is really bad timing,” says the principal, who, like the others, didn’t want to be identified. He says the new custodians are okay, but that he is still waiting on Aramark to let him know their schedules.
The principal also is bothered by the fact that he has seen none of the new technology that was supposed to make the cleaning more efficient.
One principal from a South Side welcoming school says she had to get parents, teachers and students to volunteer in the days leading up to the opening of school to get her building ready. She says they spent much of the time throwing out an enormous amount of trash, sweeping and moping.
During the summer, she said she sent e-mails on a daily basis to her network chief complaining, but never heard back. One of her biggest complaints are her bathrooms, which she says smell. The custodians tell her it is a drainage problem, but there are no plans to fix it. “Can we just get some air freshener?” she said. “I have kindergarteners going into these bathrooms and they are scary.”
“I feel like this community is already disenfranchised,” she said. “You go up North and you can eat off the floors of the schools. I feel like my community should have that kind of building.”
Fred Klonsky 
I dunno, Fred, something sounds wrong. I mean, the private sector always outperforms the public sector, doesn’t it? I think I heard that from, like, God or something. Or maybe Rahm Emanuel, same difference.
I worked in a suburban school district several years ago that fired its custodians in favor of Aramark. We experienced similar problems. Most of the workers didn’t speak English so that presented additional issues. I found the workers very diligent and conscientious but they were limited by using cleaning products that just didn’t clean. The products had such horrible fumes that it affected my and often their respiratory tracts. Since I was able to communicate somewhat with the workers, they told me that if they complained about the cleaning products’ fumes or ineffectiveness used they’d be fired. That’s why they often wore masks when cleaning. Several told me they bought brand name cleaning products out of their own money just so their area would look clean and they wouldn’t be hassled or threatened with dismissal by their supervisors. Considering most of the workers were minimum wage earners with no health insurance or other benefits, this had to eat out of their already meager wages. I thought the workers did the best they could with what they had but it seemed apparent that for my school district saving money was what counted and for Aramark making money was what it was all about even if it took a human or environmental toll.
why is it that theses types of problems always occur in black inner city schools and never in white suburban schools???
Someone needs to investigate as to whether the privatized janitors are required to pass a fingerprint background check or does CPS rely on the company’s “word” that a background check has been done. “Define background check” should be a question.
I agree with the above poster-the privatized janitors have no training and were not given any safety information on handling blood borne pathogens or how to handle/not handle asbestos
which is all over the old buildings in CPS.
When I started teaching in CPS in 1974 the schools were spotless even in the 100 year old buildings. The building engineer and the janitorial staff knew not only, how to clean but provided preventive maintenance and minor repairs. Everyone took pride in keeping the school clean no matter why the neighborhood looked like. A few years before I retired I asked our privatized janitor to clean out my classroom sink on Fridays ( I was tired of doing it) He told me his company said he could not do that because “it was a personal item” He was later transferred after he was observed on security tapes filming the eight grade girls at a school dance.
Reblogged this on Dolphin and commented:
Privatization…gotta love it. Not.