Jason Arndt, jarndt@shawanoleader.com
Shawano School Board members voted Monday to pay $63,000 more annually for cleaner schools.
GCA Services won the school district’s contract for cleaning services for 2013-14 with a bid of $447,000. The company this year bid $477,000, and lost the contract to Building Services Group, which bid $510,000.
The board OK’d the contract 8-1, with Bruce Milavitz dissenting.
“My concern is that every year we spend more and more for the same type of services,” Milavitz said. “I am not comfortable with spending that much more. We can spend it on a teacher in our district, which is way more valuable than cleaning services.”
Jeff Easter, district maintenance director, said the Cleaning Service Contract Review Committee was dissatisfied with GCA’s performance despite its six-year relationship with the district.
“We had issues in the past where the prior company has had shortage of staff and the cleaning suffered as a result,” Easter said. “We had a large problem between November through January.”
Easter said GCA did not have a large enough pool of relief workers and suffered some staffing shortages that affected the cleaning.
Building Services Group, he said, hired 20 full-time employees not assigned to specific areas to enhance its customer service.
Easter also said Building Services Group’s customers include Green Bay and Fox Valley area school districts, while Shawano had been GCA’s only school district.
“After consulting with our committee members, we felt it was the best option available to us,” Easter said of the change. “We have a whole other standard we hold ourselves to.”
Easter said he was impressed with Building Services Group’s proactive efforts to meet with him and the committee regarding the district’s expectations.