Quakertown Community School District Superintendent Matthew Friedman is set to meet with management from SSC Service Solutions, the district's janitorial contractor, district officials said Monday.
The plan came after a janitor employed by SSC Service Solutions to clean Quakertown schools complained at the August and September board meetings of understaffing that he said has left the high school dirtier than it should be.
Board president Todd Hippauf said at Monday's commitee meeting that he'd visited multiple schools since the new year began, including the high school, and that there is "room for improvement." Board directors Chris Spear and Chuck Shermer both said this week they planned to tour the high school to judge its cleanliness for themselves.
SSC Service Solutions should figure out staffing levels, Hippauf said, so that "we don't have their disgruntled employees — our subcontractors — causing an uproar."
The janitorial staff is overworked and underpaid, the custodian, John Weiss, had said at the September meeting. "We really need some help."
SSC, a national cleaning and maintenence company, has faced complaints about low wages before. SSC cleaners at a Virginia college unionized last year to secure a 35% raise and better benefits.
The district superintendent is waiting on the custodial company to provide potential meeting dates, Christine said Monday. Friedman confirmed Wednesday that no date has been set, although "we have been trying."
What's in the Quakertown cleaning contract?
Quakertown will pay SSC nearly $1.5 million this year for custodial services and bathroom supplies, including toilet paper, according to the current contract, which was obtained via an open records request. The cleaners are also available for special events at an additional charge under the contract, and to open and close facilities as needed.
The SSC contract allows the district to terminate it for unsatisfactory performance with three months' notice.
The contract requires SSC to clean schools and district offices, as well as the facilities at Alumni Field. But emails obtained via open records request show that the custodial services have recently presented problems for the athletic department.
High school soccer games had to be moved to a different field at the last minute in September, wrote the athletics director, Brian Laiacona, after an SSC employee told him that staff would not be able to clean Alumni Field after Friday night's football game before the scheduled Saturday morning soccer games.
A field hockey group was also supposed to use part of the same multipurpose field that morning, arriving earlier than the soccer teams, but no one from SSC had showed up to let the field hockey players in, Laiacona wrote, by the time he got there for soccer. "They would have been locked out of there too without me present."
The contract, originally signed in 2016, stipulates that SSC gradually takes over nighttime cleaning positions as existing evening custodians employed directly by the district retire. When an evening custodian employed by the district leaves, an SSC employee is to replace them, according to the contract. The district currently has two evening custodian employees remaining, Christine confirmed Tuesday, adding that QCSD also employs its daytime cleaners directly.
Reporter Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com.
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