FPS to bus drivers, custodians: We accept your offer

The Board of Education has agreed to accept proposals from its transportation and custodial unions, rather than accepting bids from private contractors to perform those services. But there is a catch.

The two employee groups have until May 17 to ratify contracts with the proposed concessions that will save the district $2.3 million per year for the next three years. If they don't, the district will enter agreements with Durham Transportation Services and SODEXO to provide those services.

And there’s likely to be another caveat – the district’s other workers, from the top administration to the teachers to food services, will be asked to put their money where their mouth is when they say that they’re all in the struggle together. As they negotiate their contracts, they’ll be asked to make similar wage and benefits concessions as the district faces declining enrollment, decreased state funding, and skyrocketing health care and retirement costs.

The board is still negotiating with its other bargaining units, noted school board member Tim Devine. It just happens, he said, that the contracts for the district’s lowest paid employees needed to be negotiated first.

He said the board is going to have to look to the rest of its staff to save money or else the district’s budget will spend its $18 million fund balance and “fall off the cliff in a year or two. … Where are we going to go (for additional funding)? To Lansing? Are you kidding? Should we close more schools? Should we lay off teachers? Should we increase class sizes?”

While the district’s core mission is the classroom, Devine said that the district received “compelling offers with substantial sacrifice” from the unions. “I will expect nothing short of … shared sacrifice from all our employees.”

The administration had told its bargaining units that if they could achieve 75 percent of the nearly $15 million in savings that the private contractors could offer, the board would not privatize. They came close, but didn’t quite reach that goal, said Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and Legal Services David Ruhland.

But that was close enough to convince Board President Howard Wallach to keep the district employees. He said that up until Monday afternoon, he did not know yet how he would vote on the proposals. Then, he saw that the difference between what was asked of the unions and what they delivered was only one quarter of one percent of the district’s total budget.

“There’s no way in hell I’m going to let you lose your jobs over that,” Wallach told the crowd that attended the board meeting at Tuesday, prompting a standing ovation – and a few tears shed by the employees who since February, when the district approved requests for bids from contractors, had been attending board meetings to plead for their jobs.

But not every board member was convinced that the savings, no matter how substantial, will be enough to continue to balance the district’s budget. Board members Frank Reid and Priscilla Brouillette voted against the proposals.

Reid noted that the unions had not met the goal of 75 percent of the savings the contractors could offer.

“We have no control over our revenues,” Reid said. “We only have control over our spending.”

Brouillette said that as revenues from the state are declining, retirement costs are escalating so quickly that the district has for years had to make drastic cuts, including closing four elementary schools last year, just to balance the budget. And that won’t be enough, unless the district can get out from under those retirement costs, which privatizing would accomplish.

In addition to Devine and Wallach, Deborah Brauer, Karen Bolsen and Sheilah Clay voted in favor of the proposals.