By ROBERT LINNEHAN | The Haddonfield Sun
The school district shifted to its new summer schedule and made the transition to an outsourced janitorial service last week in a continued effort to save money wherever possible.
Board of Education Vice President Michael Joseph Mercanti-Anthony said the district is only opening its offices during the summer for four days each week in an effort to save costs related to air conditioning and energy.
The secretarial staff and other employees at the offices are working the same number of hours during the week, he said, but doing so in only four days.
This measure saves the district about $2,000 a month. It doesn’t sound like much, he said, but during these difficult economic times for school districts every bit of savings can help.
“All of this began with conversations about what we could do to change the schedule. The office staff is working longer in the day, four days a week and we’re shutting the offices down on Friday,” he said. “We’re able to shut those down on Friday and realize some savings. It’s not a huge savings, it’s about $2,000 a month that we’re projecting to save, but everything helps.”
This was first discussed during the budget season, he said. The district currently turns the chiller off for several areas of the high school in the summer, which saves about $50,000 a year in energy costs for the district.
BOE President Steve Weinstein said the program is an interesting cost-saving initiative for the district.
“The four-day week was one of the cost-savings initiatives suggested by our administration during this past budget process. It is part of our energy-saving initiative which includes more automatic light switches and anything else we can afford to do right now that will produce savings,” Weinstein said. “We are being helped tremendously in this effort by one of our long-time EAs, Charley Bergdoll, who had a career at PECO before he retired and is very knowledgeable in this area. That is a good example of how devoted our entire staff is to helping the district.”
As well as the transition to the summer hours, the outsourced custodial staff began its first shift last week, Mercanti-Anthony said. The custodial service was outsourced to an outside company several months ago and is projected to save the district $300,000 this upcoming school year.
He said the savings would likely increase to $400,000 for the 2011–2012 school year. This year the district had to pay out about $100,000 in retirement benefits for the staff.
Nine of the 28 employees from the old custodial service were hired by the new company to work at the high school, Mercanti-Anthony said.
“A few others on our old staff retired as well. The new custodians, they were all fingerprinted, went through federal background checks and state background checks. All security clearances have gone on throughout this process,” he said. “Many parents were nervous about this and we have taken every step. “
Mercanti-Anthony did stress that these savings aren’t “found money,” but have already been budgeted into the 2010–2011 school year budget. He did say that the Board of Education would continue to explore other cost saving ideas.
