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Privatizing. Contracting out. Out-tasking. Outsourcing. No matter what it's called, one thing is certain: Attempts to cut costs or improve efficiencies by hiring private companies to manage and perform your district's support services, from custodial and food service to transportation and substitute teachers, will likely face loud and swift opposition. After all, from the district employees whose jobs are in question, to the teachers' union representatives who oppose attempts to privatize the public school system, everyone has a stake in the decision and will fight to protect their positions- even if it means taking the district to court.
Before opening up districts to potential litigation, administrators and school board members must carefully weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing, which is often not as easy as it appears. Countless private vendors are clamoring for a piece of the $134 billion support services pie, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and administrators must separate sales pitch fact from fiction.
Multiple Applications
"As an outsource service provider, it's really about custom designing the program to match the district's needs," says Steven Weiser, regional vice president of Aramark, which provides food service and facility support management services to more than 600 school districts nationwide. "That can range from short-term consulting services to a long-term, full outsourcing model where all the people, the resources and the budget are transferred to Aramark."
Some districts, like Murphy School District, a four-school district in Phoenix, Ariz., resist outsourcing basic support services because they want to remain in charge of the quality of work performed by the custodial, food services, maintenance and transportation departments, and they want to ensure the positions are filled by people in the community. But Murphy Superintendent Paul B. Mohr Jr. concedes he turns to private companies to find qualified personnel for hard-to fill positions, including school nurses and special education teachers who work with students with severe disabilities.
In the rapidly growing suburbs of northwest Chicago, transportation problems plague Community Unit School District 300 in Carpentersville, Ill. Six years ago, bus drivers picked up any students off the street and asked where they needed to go to school because the routes were so poorly managed. "It was almost like a private taxi service," recalls Superintendent Kenneth Arndt. "Another year, we sent out postcards saying, 'Your kid's going to be picked up at such-and-such location.' However, the postcards had no addresses. It was just a comedy of horrible management problems coupled with atrocious driver absenteeism."
"It was just a comedy of horrible management problems coupled with atrocious driver absenteeism."-Kenneth Arndt, superintendent of schools, Community Unit School District 300, Carpentersville, Ill.
Arndt hopes that fully outsourcing the transportation department this fall will improve the situation. "Our experience with trying to keep the employees as local employees with a private manager was not successful," he says. "Now the proof is going to be in the pudding this fall to see whether or not the outside vendor will be able to do a better job."
For Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Fla., Kelly Educational Staffing proved to be the best solution to its substitute staffing problems. "We never had enough substitutes," according to Vicky Reynolds, chief human resource officer for Duval County schools. "We received a lot of complaints from the teachers' union because when we couldn't fill a position with a substitute, the other teachers would end up dividing the class and taking the kids, which they were never happy about. Our substitute teacher training was lacking, and we had complaints from principals."
After the district outsourced its substitute staffing two years ago, the situation improved, with more substitutes filling in for teachers. The substitutes also participate in a training program, and many of them exceed the district's minimum education requirements of 60 hours of college credit, with roughly 75 percent having a college degree.
Weighing Transportation Costs
Proponents of outsourcing, like Arndt and Weiser, often argue that since the school's primary job is to educate children, any task that distracts from that focus should be outsourced. But that can be a costly decision.
