Maricopa County school districts are relying on prison labor for cheap janitor and landscaping work, citing tight budgets and failed funding requests from voters.
Gila Bend Unified School District will pay the following amounts to the inmates: lewis prison Buckeye will now pay 50 cents an hour for work on campus such as cleaning school floors, mowing grass, taking out trash and maintaining playgrounds after the Board of Supervisors approved a contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections on Thursday. ing.
Superintendent Robert Varner said this work will only be done when students are not on campus.
Varner said the contract will cost the district about $18,000 over 18 months, far less than any other option. Additionally, hiring a maintenance staff member costs $40,000 to $45,000 a year, including benefits, and contracting with a landscaping company can be expensive, he said.
The district serves 465 elementary and high school students in Gila Bend, a small rural community.
“Many districts can afford to have three or four people in their entire grounds department just to cover grounds,” Varner said. “We don't have that luxury.”
District claims budget override request submitted to voters last year failed
Varner first proposed the idea of using inmates to perform maintenance work to the trustees, but the next month the district's request to continue overriding the maintenance and operations budget was defeated by just 11 votes. A total of 153 votes were cast.
If approved, the 15% override request would have allowed the district to maintain the current override that voters approved in 2017. This would have helped raise funds by allowing the district to increase its maintenance budget by 15% through property taxes. Berner said staff pay and programs like full-day kindergarten are also good. Since that request was denied, the district's override will be phased out, but the district is considering trying it again with voters.
Varner said the measure's failure forced the district to look for places to cut costs.
He said the district's full-day kindergarten program is non-negotiable and will remain in place. The district also has a preschool program, which he hopes to continue supporting even if it doesn't get enough grant money to cover it.
“There are programs that we want to continue, so my job is to … balance the budget and make sure we support programs that are important to the community,” Varner said. “If we can’t pass an override, we need to look at areas where we can maintain our budget.”
His philosophy, he said, is to look farthest from the classroom for budget cuts.
Varner said hiring inmates to perform cleaning and landscaping jobs would free up existing maintenance departments to focus on other tasks, such as painting, electrical work and plumbing. And he said he could save money by just paying $1,000 a month to get the job done.
Currently, the district has five full-time staff members and one part-time staff member, but they are all spread out, Varner said.
“Our players are always scrambling,” he said. “Our staff is driving the bus and doing a little bit of everything.”
The district also has a “huge amount of square footage” to maintain, Varner said. It's a very large land with lots of fields.
School district says inmates won't work while students are on campus
The school district declined to share a copy of the labor contract, citing security reasons. Barner said the contract includes language that prohibits inmates who are classified as sex offenders or criminals from working in the district.
Cleaning of school buildings will occur after 8:00 p.m., when school is closed and after-school activities end. Landscaping work will only be done on weekends and Mondays when school is not in session. He estimates that five to 10 inmates will work about 15 hours a week doing landscaping work and about 20 hours a week as janitors.
If there is a school event, such as a sports game or parent-teacher conference, the district will cancel the inmate's work for that day. It also said inmates would not be allowed to work in school kitchens, where sharp objects are kept, or in health rooms or district offices, where student records are kept.
Supervision will be done by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, and the district will pay the supervisor's fee, not including stipends, and the district will have cameras “everywhere,” Varner said.
This is not the first time the district has contracted with the state prison system for similar work. Before the pandemic, before Varner became district superintendent, Gila Bend Unified had a similar agreement with the Lewes Jail. However, work stopped due to the coronavirus outbreak, Varner said.
On Thursday, three board members voted in favor of approving the contract, one opposed and one abstained. The district said the meeting was not recorded or livestreamed, and board members were not available for comment.
Gila Bend Unified isn't the only Arizona school district turning to prison labor to cut costs.
A 2022 Arizona Republic investigation found that at least 21 K-12 public school districts in the state, including Gila Bend Unified, had contracts with the Department of Corrections between 2017 and 2021. Most school districts are members of the Arizona Rural School Association, which pays inmates 50 cents an hour for tasks such as building maintenance, grounds maintenance, HVAC repairs, painting, mopping, trashing, and plumbing. I was paying. Most of the contracts obtained by Republic during its investigation contained language prohibiting inmates classified as sex offenders or criminals.
Madeline Parrish covers K-12 education.please contact her mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.
