Schools Maintenance Deal In Limbo

Amid reports of new schools with already malfunctioning HVAC systems and neglected air filters, the Board of Education is reconsidering its dependence on an outside facilities manager.

The board has asked for more information on the efficacy of the maintenance contractor, Go To Services and the cost of bringing those positions back in-house.

“I want to see if they are cost-effective and getting the job done,” said board member Darnell Goldson.

“I suspect not, but we’ll see the numbers,” 

When city building inspectors toured New Haven public schools this fall to prepare them for Covid-19 safety measures, they found air filters that hadn’t been changed in years, exhaust fans that had rusted because someone forgot to cover them, water damage and more.

Some of the maintenance problems have health or academic consequences, like when Wexler-Grant students were sent home because their school was too cold.

“Because of asthma, there are quite a few students that have chronic absenteeism. God forbid those filters were the cause of any of these children’s asthma to not be in control — that is something that has really been bothering me. People have to do their job. If their job is to change filters, we have filters for a reason,” said board member and pediatrician Tamiko Jackson-McArthur.

The most urgent problems related to Covid-19 safety have been fixed prior to schools reopening. But the maintenance issues have raised a question articulated by the Board of Alders after two schools closed for safety reasons: how did the products of New Haven’s $1.7 billion school construction boom deteriorate so quickly? Or, as Alder Rosa Santana said at a hearing on the subject: ​“Somebody didn’t do the work. Somebody bankrolled the money somewhere.”

At a meeting Monday night, where the deferred maintenance was discussed, Superintendent Iline Tracey asked the board not to focus on who was responsible for the problems, which predate her tenure.

“I am not here to fault anyone. I, as a leader, will take the blame as we move forward,” Tracey said.

She asked Go To Executive Director of Facilities Joseph Barbarotta to explain more about the air filter neglect. He repeated what he told the board’s Finance and Operations Committee last week.

The custodial engineer who would have handled the air filters and exhaust fans got cut from the school budget in past years, he said. The district no longer has a warehouse to store preordered air filters, so they have to go directly to each school. New Haven has never gotten enough money to keep up its shiny new schools once they were built.

In fact, 10 years ago, the engineering company Sightlines estimated New Haven should spend $41 million per year on maintaining school buildings. This would include $21 million from the city, versus the maintenance budget of $4 million at that time.

“They did an evaluation that we needed $41 million a year. I promise this number has increased,” Barbarotta said.

Despite these challenges, Go To and the school custodians and tradesmen have kept up with changing air filters regularly, Barbarotta said. He showed board members a chart of when filters were purchased and replaced at schools since 2019 and an example report from indoor air quality inspections. The unchanged filters were a tiny number compared to the 6,244 total filters, he said.

“If it was only one filter, then we are 99.999 percent in a good place. One is infinitesimal, a very small part of 6,000 filters,” said board member Ed Joyner.

Goldson pointed out that filters are just one example of an ongoing problem. School buildings have had broken doors and soap dispensers before construction was even officially complete. Board members have grilled Go To on these glaring maintenance issues before.

“This suggestion that this is all new or just a one-off, small problem is not the case. These are just problems we have identified at this moment,” Goldson said.

Board members spoke about potential solutions to the problem of overlooked and unchanged filters.

Barbarotta has already drawn up a list of signatures (pictured above) from the people who put in the air filters, a longterm practice suggested by board member Matt Wilcox at the committee meeting last week. View these signatures here.

Joyner suggested that all school buildings get health building certifications and that principals get realtime, automatic updates on the machinery in their schools. Board members are also considering adopting a formal air quality policy used by other Connecticut schools.

Others talked about personnel changes.

“If we have to bring back those positions and go after special funding, as a policymaker those are things I need to see happen,” said board member Larry Conaway.

Goldson criticized the decision in 2011 to outsource unionized custodial jobs.

“Somebody has to be held accountable for what’s going on. We could have predicted this when we decimated the custodian’s union. We take workers offline and give the work to supervisors who are not changing filters or oiling motors,” Goldson said.

During a private executive session, board members talked more about this suggestion. They reviewed Go To’s current contract and asked staff to look at the cost of other options, like in-house staff.