NHPS Pays Up For Elevator Repairs

A Metropolitan Business Academy elevator that was vandalized by students and accidentally damaged by a substitute janitor has cost the district an extra $29,000 in repairs — and has resulted in another sizable contractual change order.

The district’s Board of Education approved a contractual change order with a 20 percent increase for the facilities team to make repairs to one of Metro’s severely damaged elevators, as well as separate needed repairs to an elevator at Wilbur Cross. 

At the board’s Monday meeting held in person at Ross Woodward and online via Zoom, school board members voted unanimously to pass the change order for those elevator repairs, which have already been completed.

The cost of these repairs — Metro’s cab interior for $21,500, Metro’s cab lighting for $7,500, and Wilbur Cross’s lift for $9,000 — totaled $38,000.

The district’s on-call elevator services contractor is Kone, Inc. The extra funds were needed for the recent invoice for the vandalism repairs because the repairs weren’t covered by the vendor’s on-call services agreement. 

At a Finance and Operations committee meeting held before Monday’s board meeting, NHPS contractor ABM’s Executive Director of Facilities Jamar Alleyne explained that the Metro elevator had damage from hard kicks to the cab, lighting being pulled out, and paneling being ripped from the walls. 

In a Thursday email, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon further explained that the vandalism of the Metro elevator ​“involved a series of events that eventually made a larger repair necessary.” He continued to explain that restorative efforts were made when it was possible to identify those responsible. ​“Most often, restorative efforts entailed such activities as cleaning the elevator. There also were incidents that resulted in suspensions and court summons,” Harmon said.

Also, according to Harmon, some of the damage was not due to vandalism. ​“One of the last outages prior to the repairs was caused by a substitute night custodian hitting the back of the elevator with a cleaning machine, denting the back wall and limiting elevator movement,” Harmon said. ​“The elevator being fixed was a result of multiple outages. They fixed the inside panels that were chipped, ripped, and dented, and re-instituted a badge system to restrict usage.“

Before Monday’s final vote, board members raised concerns about the increasing frequency of change orders received by district vendors that reach or at times surpass the city’s procurement threshold of 20 percent. The board is currently working to update its procurement policy to include language about change order thresholds that would require additional approvals; however, the policy is not yet active, and so the board follows the city’s current policy. 

Board members Edward Joyner and Andrea Downer raised concerns yet again about large change orders becoming a norm for the board, making it so its lowest bidders sometimes actually do not turn out to be the most affordable for the district. 

They urged for the new policy in the works to include clauses in all contracts to protect the district from bids increasing without clear evidence of unanticipated events. Joyner said seasonal and inflated costs should be anticipated in initial bids and contractors should be held to the expectation of giving honest bids from the start.

“Everything can’t be vendored out,” Downer said. ​“If you ran your house like that, you would be homeless.”

Joyner concluded that the district also must do more to hold students accountable for bad behavior. especially for costly harm like vandalism.

Student representative and rising Cross senior John Carlos Serana Musser argued Monday that the district’s facilities, too often in a state of disrepair, are also sometimes to blame for exacerbating student misbehavior.

“While I do agree in large part that [with] student vandalism, student accountability has to be a factor, I do think too that in large part it’s also due to the fact that there’s a lack of structure in New Haven Public Schools,” he said. 

“I mean, in my sophomore year I had my American law classroom roof collapse and a year’s worth of projects were destroyed. And we have these sort of things happening consistently. It’s just like it brews chaos in a school.”

He added that he believes most students causing vandalism could benefit from restorative practices. But due to ​“the lack of stable infrastructure, students also in a way feel disrespected by NHPS. It feels very hostile, and it just doesn’t really feel like a community.” 

“Simple stuff like using the bathroom, or relieving yourself, is difficult. You have 30 minutes a day going through the school and just trying to open locked doors. It’s very frustrating, and so as a result, you have a lot of students who already come from troubled households,” he said. ​“I mean, what, 500 students in New Haven are homeless? How many of those students also come from very unfortunate situations and as a result come to school already not in the best mindset for learning? So when they come to school with not the best mindset for learning, and on top of that a school which doesn’t have the environment for learning, what are you really going to get? You need to have the learning environment stable first before you can really expect that much from students,” he concluded. 

At Monday’s meeting, four more change orders were approved by the board, but due to adjusted work timelines rather than cost. The change orders were for playground installations at John Martinez, Dr. Mayo, Brennan Rogers, and Wexler Grant. The upgrades were initially set to be finished by June 30, but were not for unclear reasons, Alleyne told the Finance and Operations committee at a June 17 meeting. 

As a result, he requested approval to extend the playground upgrade dates to next fiscal year. He anticipated the work for all school playgrounds to be be done by December. Once the work PO is cut, the timeline is expected to be 17 weeks for prep and delivery of materials, and 2 – 3 weeks of construction.