By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Brandon — During the regular Monday night meeting, the Brandon Board of Education awarded a contract for custodial services to ABM Janitorial.
“As you know, we went out for bids several weeks ago. It was a long process, we had 9 vendors bid,” said Jan Ziesel, chief financial officer for the district. “We went through the bids, narrowed it down to interview 4 vendors. Of the four vendors, we narrowed it to two, and ultimately chose ABM.”
Currently, the district has a contract with DM Burr, which ends in June. Ziesel previously said that there has been turnover and trouble maintaining a full custodial staff for a while.
“This is a restart for us. We’ve had issues for the last year and building cleanliness is a priority, and the team feels very strongly that ABM is going to bring us what we hope to get, clean buildings, professionalism, all that stuff,” said Ziesel. “Just recently I found out one of our custodians had never been trained, that’s why we need this.”
Representatives from ABD stressed that they focus on training and new technology in the custodial field. The new contract will start with a higher pay scale as well, and hire people from the area.
“The contract we’re going with is a jump. Last summer we were paying $13 an hour to custodians, we increased to $14, and then high school $14.75. That’s just not cutting it,” said Ziesel. “We did a lot of analysis in the area. ABM will be starting their minimum salary for custodians at $16.75, with 5 vacation days, 5 holidays, sick days, some benefits. We feel good about that, we’re very competitive with the area.”