A vote on whether to contract with GCA services for the school system's custodial work will apparently be left to the incoming school board members.
Though the matter was not included on the agenda for Thursday night's regular monthly meeting of the board of education, GCA representatives addressed the board in an effort to ease the minds of those concerned about the controversial proposal.
The company has offered to perform the school system's custodial duties for the price of $400,000 for the first year, with renewal options annually for four years. While the system currently spends approximately $469,000 on janitorial services, some board members feel that the proposal cannot mathematically save the kind of money they promise without cutting positions or benefits.
While GCA officials said that all current school system custodial staff who are recommended by the principals would be hired by the company, and all paper goods, chemicals, trash bags and equipment will be provided by GCA., school board member W.J. (Dub) Evins, III expressed concern that the math does not add up.
Evins questioned GCA Human Resource Manager Darren Kreakie on the matter of salaries and benefits currently offered as opposed to those offered by GCA.
"The contract amount is $400,000," Evins said. "That's what our salaries and benefits (for custodial services) end up costing us. What I'm having trouble understanding is if it's costing us $400,000, why is it not costing you $400,000? The financial savings is something I have not been able to justify. If it costs us $400,000, it will also cost GCA the same, unless they cut wages or positions. That is simple math."
"We can save you money while giving your employees the exact same wage rate and similar benefits to what they're getting and vacation benefits," Kreakie said. "The reason we can do that is because we save money elsewhere. We save our customers anywhere between 12 and 25 percent, depending on the amount that they spend. We can do it a lot cheaper because we have national buying power."
"A lot of times what we save is in the benefits," Kreakie continued. "Where you have to go out and buy a policy for "X" amount of people, we have 30,000 people, so we can get a benefit package for a lot less because we have more users in that. That's where a lot of our savings come is in the benefit program."
Evins maintained that he could not see how the company could charge the school system $400,000 for the contract, pay the same $400,000 in salaries and benefits, and still make money. The GCA representatives replied that if the company didn't make money it was not the school system's problem, and GCA would have to absorb the loss.
Although GCA representatives did not go into specifics on the subject of benefits, saying that they did not have the specific numbers on hand, the Review has obtained information on benefits currently received by school custodians and those offered by GCA services, and learned that while the school system currently offers 10 sick days per year, 12 vacation days, two personal days, and five paid holidays for a total of 29 days per year, the GCA proposal offers three sick days, eight vacation days, no paid holidays and no personal days, for a total of 11 days per calendar year.
Adressing the subject of hiring practices, in which several cases of alleged sex with minors and drug-related charges involving GCA employees, Kreakie claimed that the company always conducts thorough background checks when hiring.
"A lot of people are concerned about background checks," he said. "Our policies match with DeKalb County's. After we put our employees through a rigorous screening background check with us, and once they pass, then they have to go to the State of Tennessee and get fingerprinted through the school district. At that point the school district would receive the results from that fingerprint and then Mr. Willoughby would look at the results and make a decision on whether he wants that person within the school district or not and we would adhere to that. We do that in many different locations throughout the state of Tennessee. Our job is to make sure our employees are safely taken care of. Go home safe and come back to work."
"What we like to do is take care of our employees. That's our number one asset and it will still be our number one asset if we are given the opportunity to take DeKalb County as well. We're willing to offer all current employees a position as long as they get a recommendation and pass a rigorous background screening check through GCA," he said.
Evins also said that he would like to study the proposed contract to find out specifically what custodial services GCA would be responsible for. "I haven't seen a contract. I had talked to GCA Senior Regional Manager Josh Helton. He emailed and asked me if there is something I specifically needed. I told him I knew there are clauses in certain contracts that state, in this case, what custodial services will not be done. I never heard back from anyone," said Evins.
"Our contracts come with specs with what we will do and won't do. What they (custodians) are doing now, they will do with us. If there is a late night football game or basketball game, that's all included in that price. There is no extra money," said Kreakie.
