Canutillo ISD board gets earful from angry custodial employees over outsourcing

Canutillo ISD trustees got an earful tonight from very angry employees. Custodial employees saw an item on the agenda that called for discussion on outsourcing. They took this to mean there would be layoffs. The entire department came out to confront the board members.

The idea to discuss outsourcing was brought forward by trustee Adrian Medina. He believes doing this could save the district money. The district points to its recent decision to outsource its food service management to an outside company. It allowed them to get quality food at a competitive price.

But by outsourcing the management, that didn’t mean there were layoffs. It just means they brought in an outside company. He wanted to discuss the same concept for the custodial department.

“What I did was bring up the discussion of where can we save some money,” Medina said. “We have $3.6 million deficit that we have to make up. The state can come in here anytime if we don’t balance that budget. We have consecutive budgets of not being balanced. They can actually come in and take over the district. So there’s a lot of things at play here. All people think about was, ‘I’m going to lose my job,’ which was never, ever a part of the discussion. I was just looking at all possible things. If we’re talking about closing schools, or outsourcing staff, we got to put everything out there. I can’t treat something as a sacred cow.

The board took no action on the item.