Maintenance Chief Grilled On Neglect

The next time one of the 6,244 filters that clean the air in school buildings does not get changed, New Haven school officials said, they intend to find out who did not do their job.

They said that at a hearing Monday night into embarrassing revelations about routine repairs overlooked for years in schools throughout New Haven, endangering students’ health.

The occasion was a hearing of the Board of Education’s Finance and Operations Committee.

Members grilled the contractor hired to maintain the schools, Go To Services, in the wake of the revelation (reported here and here) about air filters going unchanged and neglected, broken heating systems. The Board of Ed decided to close two schools altogether because of deferred maintenance deemed too far gone to fix; at another, Wexler-Grant, students have been directed to wear coats and hats in class and at one point were sent home because of heating malfunctions.

The contractor offered officials a mixture of defense, explanations and proposed solutions for the problems.

“This really is an example of deferred maintenance. We have half as much money as we had before, and we’re doing our best,” said Go To’s Joseph Barbarotta, who serves as the school district’s executive director of facilities (and works directly for Go To).

City building inspectors, health officials and outside engineers have combed through New Haven Public Schools buildings this year to an unprecedented extent to ensure student and staff safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the process, they found that the products of New Haven’s $1.7 billion school construction boom had air filters coated with years of dust, exhaust fans left to rust and leaks causing ceilings to peel.

Many of the most urgent safety problems have been fixed since the inspections in October with Covid-19 relief dollars. However, one school had 30 filters still unchanged as recently as last week.

6,000 Filters, Zero Engineers

Barbarotta told the Board of Education’s Finance and Operations Committee Monday night that these problems were the exception, not the rule.

There are 6,244 filters actively cleaning air in New Haven’s 46 public school buildings. These are millions of square feet Barbarotta has to ensure gets cleaned and maintained.

Barbarotta found out on Monday about a custodian who had replaced one air filter in a school with the more efficient MERV 13 filter while the other filters were still sitting in the gym. Barbarotta said this was a rare case that he would double-check is now fixed.

“I don’t think we’re going to find any more filters. I’m very confident that the 6,244 are now all in place,” he said.

Board member Larry Conaway asked how the district missed changing some filters for years before the pandemic hit. Were they just overlooked?

Yes, Barbarotta said. Until 2013, New Haven Public Schools had an engineer on staff within the custodians union. This person would change filters in ventilation systems and change belts and grease motors on the fans that exhausted stale air out of the building. Then, that position was cut.

The annual budget for bringing in an outside contractor to handle the work was cut too from $100,000 to $50,000. That’s just enough to buy the filters, Barbarotta said. Custodians at each building became responsible for installing the filters.

The district focused on MERV 8 filters for a time. They were as efficient at cleaning the air as was necessary at the time, they were relatively inexpensive, and they needed to be replaced only once a year.

But when the Covid-19 pandemic began, parents, teachers and board members began to demand higher quality filters as a precondition to reopening schools. The district spent $150,000 to replace all 6,000-plus filters.

These will need to be changed again in the next month or two. The district has placed the order for the replacements.

“I’m happy to hear that you are ready to do that all over. We need a checks-and-balances system, so we make sure we don’t miss anything like it seems that we did. I’m glad to hear that this was the exception and not the rule,” Conaway said.

As a former principal, Conaway vouched for custodians doing the jobs they promise to do.

“Maybe it’s a communication thing,” he said.

Board member Matt Wilcox suggested requiring initialized checklists for the filters. He emphasized how important clean filters are for preventing airborne diseases like Covid-19 and keeping students with asthma safe.

“I’m a big believer in checklists. People sign off that Person A was responsible, they initialed it. We should be able to spot check and know that it was done,” Wilcox said.

“Or hold someone accountable if it’s not,” offered district Chief Financial Officer Phil Penn.

Wilcox asked district staff to report back on the topic at the full board meeting and the next Finance and Operations Committee — particularly if they find any instances of the district being billed for work that wasn’t done. 

Conaway asked whether it would make sense to bring back the custodial engineer position. This would be in addition to the currently vacant chief operating officer position. Since Michael Pinto left the role in November, Penn and Barbarotta have stretched their jobs to cover the facilities tasks Pinto would have done.

“It would be worth it [to hire the engineer]. We just gotta fund it from somewhere,” Penn responded.

On Tuesday, the Rev. Boise Kimber released a statement on behalf of clergy demanding a stronger response from the Board of Education to the deferred maintenance revelations.

The release stated in part:

Air filters that had sat collecting dust for years at public schools throughout New Haven while we continued to spend tax dollars on companies like GO TO Services to manage our buildings.

Safety Issues were only identified after some members of the Board of Education insisted that inspections be completed, as a response to the current pandemic. The inspections soon led to the permanent closures of two schools (Quinnipiac and West Rock), as well as many other safety issues identified.

These issues were IGNORED for years, and have endangered the lives of our students and staff who occupied those buildings.

Not only was the lack of regular upkeep of these buildings an immoral issue, but also may have ignored state law, which calls for regular inspections of buildings and the development of safety plans [see notes below]. From what we can tell, none of this occurred. …

We and the community we represent demand answers to the following questions.

1. Were safety reports completed in the past? If so, when? If not, why not?
2. What other state mandates were ignored?
3. Who had the responsibility to manage and supervise building maintenance?
4. Provide maintenance records for each school facility for the last five years.

We also demand the following of the school board:

1. immediately establish indoor air quality committees for each school as outlined in state statutes.
2. review and follow state statutes related to their role as outlined in those statutes.

3. hold those persons responsible accountable.