Mayor Elicker calls for the district to provide monthly building-by-building facilities updates to the school board. The private contractor that has been managing the city school district’s facilities since 2022 is set to end its work with New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) at the end of the mont h — as the district continues to address emergency facilities problems and tries to bring on more in-house custodial, trades, and facilities managers. That’s the latest with the upcoming departure of ABM Industry Groups LLC from managing NHPS facilities. In May, the Board of Education approved a short-term transitional contract with ABM as the district embarked on building up its in-house team. The contract began on July 1, ends on Sept. 30, and cost $116,000. NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón gave the school board an update last Monday about the district’s transition away from relying on private contractors and towards building back up the district’s facilities department. She also noted that Dennis Tondalo, who had recently been hired as NHPS’ new facilities manager, had reversed his offer acceptance and returned to his previous role as building manager at Conte West Hill School. “Please know that an offer has already been extended to another top candidate from our interview pool,” Negrón said, while adding that the district is now waiting on a response to its new offer. “These are all civil service positions so there’s a whole assessment that happens on the city side and we receive the list of top candidates. Those are the pool of people that we have to interview from,” she added. Since Tondalo‘s departure, and while the district waits on responses, Negrón said the district’s facilities operations work is being led by Chief of School Operations (CSO) Paul Whyte. Negrón also said that the district has selected a custodial day supervisor that is in the pre-employment process. After this. the superintendent’s recommendation will be put forward for the board to consider the hire. A candidate has also been identified for the district’s night shift supervisor. Negrón said an offer will be made this week to the selected individual. Five recently vacated itinerant maintenance floater workers have also been hired according, to the board’s personnel report for Monday’s meeting. Those staffers must complete a 90-day probationary period, according to their contract, before they can bid to take on an open assistant manager position. An additional ten floaters received offers to join the maintenance team and are going through the pre-employment process before a recommendation is submitted to the board. Next, the district will seek to hire two carpenters and two plumbers. The hiring process for these positions goes through the city’s Civil Service Commission. Once a civil service test is administered through the city, the district is then able to make its selections after receiving the city’s top candidates. “We Have To Do Better In Communicating Around What We Are Doing” Also during Monday’s board meeting, five community members spoke up during public comment about concerns with the state of the district’s facilities. Those speakers, many of whom recently joined a Hillhouse rally/building walkthrough, said that privatization of facilities management over the decades has negatively impacted the district. They demanded that the district urgently address building conditions that affect the health and learning of students and staff. The teachers union president, Leslie Blatteau, also provided an update that as of Monday, the union had filed over 30 grievances so far this school year regarding building safety and health. Negrón also shared updates on a few other facilities-related matters. At Hillhouse High School, the district was awarded a $6.8 million state grant to cover an $8.8 million roof replacement. The district is beginning the process of seeking a contractor and expects to select a contractor for the project by the end of 2026. The work should then start in the winter. “While the winter months will present challenges, we think its realistic to project that we will have a completed roof in the spring,” Negrón said. In the meantime, the district is patching the roof sections that are causing classroom leaks. The impacted classes have since been relocated. Mold testing was done in the five leak-ridden classrooms as well as in other spaces recently reported for concerns. Negrón said no mold was found to be in the five classrooms but surface mold was discovered in the third-floor computer room. Remediation has started for the computer room, and ceiling tiles and light bulbs throughout the building continue to be replaced as need. Once the five classrooms are back open for use, Negrón said, the district has made a plan for Hillhouse’s principal and a custodial worker to check those spaces on a daily basis to be sure problems are reported before teachers arrive for the day. Once Hillhouse’s roof is replaced, Negrón said, the plan is to next replace the building’s entire HVAC system. “We will continue to provide the school community with periodic updates concerning ongoing facilities work that are happening in the building,” she said. In response to a public comment Monday that King/Robinson’s auditorium, where board meetings are currently hosted in-person, was too hot, Negrón said, “If it means that we have to repair an HVAC system, of course air temps are going to be what they are until we repair HVAC systems.”  At Lincoln Bassett School, where a broken sprinkler head flooded areas of the library, four classrooms, and the STEM lab, Negrón said the remediation work is now complete. That means all water-damaged dry wall and carpets have been removed. Next, new flooring will be installed and a general contractor will arrange to reinstall new dry wall, baseboards, and student cubbies. Once that’s done, the space will be re-painted followed by a final air quality test. Negrón said the indoor air quality results will be posted online. Negrón also projected that after the remaining work is completed the students and staff impacted will return to Lincoln Bassett on Sept. 28, after being relocated to Wexler Grant due to the flooding. Negrón’s final school-site updates were about Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School and King/Robinson. She reported that the district is currently working to address challenges in both buildings related to pests. As of Monday, she said, a pest control vendor and carpenter have sealed the buildings’ external entry points and placed no-chemical sticky traps throughout the buildings. Additionally, the buildings’ staffers have identified and addressed clutter in classrooms, offices, and storage area that were providing nesting areas for pests. The bait stations will be inspected weekly and staff are encouraged to report sightings.   “Board and community, please expect that I will continue to bring forth detailed reports [about] challenges that we have been addressing at different schools,” Negrón said. Negrón concluded that the district leadership has “heard the public loud and clear” and plans to give more reports like Monday’s to detail the district’s work and the use of its $15 million biannual capital budget. “We have heard the public loud and clear. We have to do better in communicating around what we are doing and not assuming that the public knows,” she said. In response to Negrón’s updates on Monday, Mayor Justin Elicker — who also sits on the Board of Education — said that “the conditions of a good number of our public schools are just not acceptable.” He noted the the city’s school district is attempting to expedite the Hillhouse roof work by seeing if the state will allow the city to use a state contractor for the job rather than execute an RFP process, which is what the state typically requires. “We have not yet gotten that confirmation,” he said. He also said that school buildings get inspections in August by the city’s fire marshal to review fire-related issues. The city’s Health Department inspects cafeterias and pools. And school safety walkthroughs occur throughout the year to primarily focus on emergency building-intrusion issues. Starting Monday, the city has added to that inspection list for schools by deploying the Health Department, the fire marshal’s office, the Building Department, and emergency management staff to walk through all schools to focus on safety. On Monday, that team walked through Hillhouse, Elicker said. In the coming weeks, he said, the team will visit each school in order of buildings with the most major concerns. “The goal here is to be collaborative, to share information, to ensure that our schools are improved, and to work collectively to address this problem,” he said. Elicker concluded with a request for the district to provide school-by-school updates to the board in a spreadsheet form, detailing buildings’ major issues and the progress made to address concerns. He also requested the document be updated monthly for board members to have public discussions about troubleshooting, cost, funding, and making sure progress is being made. Board members Andrea Downer and Edward Joyner shared documents with the board summarizing the state of the district’s school buildings, funding gaps based on spending per square foot, and the state’s responsibility in helping address district concerns. “School districts are creatures of the state, which means that according to law going all the way back to the 1800s, 1872, that the state has full responsibility for funding schools. And the way things are going now, they only fund personnel,” Joyner said. He explained that the state has “legal responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of schools.” Board member Daniel Juarez concluded Monday’s board discussion by recognizing that, while building problems started a long time ago, its the current leadership’s responsibility to work to address them. “We’re in charge now,” he said, whether that means advocating to the state and/or connecting with community partners like Yale for support. The post Facilities Roundup: ABM On The Way Out; NHPS Eyes New In-House Director; Hillhouse Roof Replacement Advances appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less