Exactly two months ago, students spent their very last day at Parker attending half-empty classes, retrieving textbooks for the rest of the semester, and cleaning out their lockers. At the same time, adults in the building were calculating how the school would proceed with paying its employees. 

According to Chief Financial Officer Bob Haugh, Parker’s employees include everyone working in the building other than outside cleaning and cafeteria staff, who are hired through third-party vendors City Wide Cleaning Inc. and Quest Food Services.

Haugh says Parker was able to keep everyone who works for the school employed. “We were lucky to have the resources to continue paying all of our employees full-time.” Faculty, staff, security guards, and all other Parker employees have not experienced a change in their paychecks. 

“Ultimately, we didn’t want to be in a situation of choosing,” Haugh said, “so we chose to keep everyone. As expensive as that might be, we thought it was very important to keep our community together. Especially in a time like this.” 

“We make decisions at the school based on core values,” Principal Dan Frank added. “We value all of Parker’s employees, so we made a commitment to making sure everyone remained employed and compensated.” 

For the same reason, Parker chose not to apply for a federal rescue loan when the Latin School did earlier this spring. “Parker has an endowment and the PPP loans were to keep businesses from going out of business. We’re not in that position.” 

Frank added that there are many independent schools around the country that are much smaller and lack Parker’s robust resources. “Their employees were at risk. We weren’t in that position. We wanted to let those funds be used by people who really need them.” 

Parker’s Board of Trustees has not had to change the school’s spending plan for this year or dip farther than planned into Parker’s endowment. The endowment, Haugh says, can serve as a safety net for the school, and although it has fluctuated with the stock market Haugh does not foresee a major problem. 

In fact, Haugh reports the operating expenses of the school have reduced significantly in the past month or two. “Seventy-five percent of our expenses are in salaries and benefits, so those expenses are still moving along at full capacity. The other twenty-five percent we’re seeing a little bit of reduction in the first two months that is expected to continue,” Haugh said. 

In May and most of April, Parker did not pay for daily cleaning, school supplies, field trips, and other miscellaneous on-campus expenses. Although Parker’s Upper School sports coaches are still being paid their full salaries, Parker is not paying Middle School coaches who hadn’t been hired yet, nor are they spending on buses or equipment. 

Parker’s cleaning staff, outsourced from City Wide Cleaning Inc.,  worked full-time at Parker through early April. The group of twelve janitorial staff members performed a deep cleaning of the school, going into every classroom and cleaning every surface in the school with the help of Parker’s cafeteria staff. 

Director of Facilities Rick Dusing stayed in communication with City Wide throughout the spring, checking that Parker’s partner companies were taking care of their employees and ensuring the staff remained employed at Parker for as long as possible. 

City Wide employees have not been in the Parker building for about a month. Dusing says Parker’s crew was relocated to help deep-clean other schools in suburban school districts that also employ City Wide. City Wide has told Dusing their employees have experienced no change in compensation, just location.

“None of the Parker crew was furloughed or laid off. They were all reassigned,” Dusing said.

Dusing is waiting to hear from the Administration about the plan for the month of June, since cleaning will revolve around the number of people in the building. Even with a vacant building, Dusing said he expects City Wide employees will be re-employed by Parker in June.

Dusing runs a Summer Work Request Program that typically starts in mid-June. “The teachers submit different requests to me and we start right after graduation,” Dusing said. “They’re usually like ‘paint my room,’ or ‘add a whiteboard.’ We also typically remove all of the furniture, deep-clean all of the carpets, and do yearly maintenance stuff. I don’t expect that to change at all this year.” 

If the request program proceeds as normal, Parker’s janitorial staff will not have experienced any change in compensation throughout the spring and summer. 

“We were very happy,” Dusing said. “They work very hard. We’re fortunate that we’re working with a company that could repurpose our crew and make sure they stayed employed through May.” Dusing hopes the team’s regular work at Parker will proceed as normal after June 1.