Our outsourcing of our janitorial staff, which is to say our hiring a company to provide us with our janitorial staff, has created a perplexing contradiction for Parker. While we pride ourselves on our community values, and we ensure that there is accountability, we outsource our janitors and so allow for–potentially–the complete opposite.

The goal in outsourcing our janitors is fair. Our school uses Citywide, a management company that supplies various companies janitorial and facility services, for our school. Even if two or three of the janitors are sick, the company still has to send ten people to Parker. Every day ten people are sent to Parker to clean our trash, and clean our school. This level of consistency would be difficult to manage, according to Director of Facilities Rick Dusing, if we were to hire our own people.

Outsourcing janitorial is also cost efficient. With a company, the cleaning supplies and equipment are provided. Even if Parker wanted to buy their own supplies, there is still limited space for them in our school. Logistically at least, it makes a lot of sense for Parker to outsource our janitorial staff.

While janitors are outsourced, we hire our own maintenance and security crew. The people hiring them feel that those jobs need a better understanding of the school. But the same standards apparently do not apply for the janitorial staff.

And outsourcing means something larger than a cost-efficient system, and consistency in who shows up at 7 am. It means that we are directly contradicting, at least possibly, our mission statement on community. With quick turn-around with our outsourced janitors, there is no ability to create any connection with our janitors.

They are only responsible for knowing the school just enough to do their jobs. When they are here, they follow the rules of our school, but also of the company that they work for. Our outsourced janitors are not responsible for knowing our community values. So here creates a gap between the people who work here, and the values that are held.

And since they are connected to a larger company, Parker cannot be accountable for how they are treated. So when a student walks by the janitorial staff that just finished picking up that student’s leftover lunch, it is not the student’s fault that they are not compelled to take a moment’s glance. Rather, it is the fact that the janitors belong to a larger company that is based 40 minutes away from Parker in Northbrook.

If we are hiring our own maintenance and our own security, then the same should be done with our janitorial staff. Take the kitchen staffers. As students line up to get their meals, they engage in conversations with the staffers. Although small talk, this is the kind of community Parker promised. The type of community where no matter the differences, there would still be connections made. I mean, isn’t that what we have always preached?

So we are asking for one group of janitors that we might hire directly and keep on as long as possible–or at least a few individuals that are continuously integrated into the community. That way they can feel as much of a part of the community as the rest of us feel.