The Clark County (Nev.) School Board has rejected a plan to allow outside custodians to participate in a pilot project to clean some school campuses in 2018-19.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the proposal never came to a vote. The requests for proposals would have allowed vendors to submit bids to the district to clean schools. The failure to vote effectively kills the pilot plan for now.
“We have to stick together as a family,” board member Kevin Child says. “I have a hard time outsourcing.”
The outsourcing proposal was originally part of the state-mandated reorganization of the massive Clark County system. The changes more decision making in the hands of principals and school organizational teams.
Schools that were interested in the custodial pilot program hoped to save money on services.
Board members were worried about the companies that would be hired, questioning whether their employees would be full-time Nevada residents and whether they would have undergone appropriate background checks.
The district was able to incorporate almost every request the board made into a request for proposal. According to the proposal, vendors interested in working with schools would have to abide by the following:
— No less than 75 percent of all supplier employees deployed to school sites must be Nevada residents.
— Suppliers must provide benefits comparable to Clark County School District benefits to its employees working at school sites.
— Suppliers must staff schools in accordance with the district’s custodial staffing formulas.
— Suppliers must have a local office and a Nevada business license.
— Supplier employees deployed to school sites must receive district-provided training on mandatory reporting of child abuse at the supplier’s expense.
Board members also had asked vendors to pay prevailing wages to employees, but there is no prevailing wage for custodians in Nevada, according to district officials. But board members still expressed concern that the vendors would not be paying their employees a fair wage.
