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Memphis school leaders are scrambling to fill an expiring custodian contract that could mean around 35 schools would lose cleaning services come January.
The school board rejected a proposal to hire ABM Industries in a 5-2 vote Tuesday during the last meeting scheduled for this calendar year. Board members cited complaints against the company from its work with Memphis-Shelby County Schools around 10 years ago.
“I care about whether kids show up to clean schools,” board member Amber Huett-Garcia said. “And we have evidence that this is a risk.”
This isn’t the first time custodian contracts have caused trouble for MSCS leaders. The one up for grabs now comes as a one-year emergency deal with ServiceMaster Clean and Parcou, formed after the district suddenly fired former vendor Fresh Start in 2024 for delayed worker payments and contract violations, expires Dec. 31. Each contract costs the district between $7 and $10 million per year.
“We do not want to be back in the news for the same thing we were in the news last year for,” board member Towanna Murphy said Tuesday. “The last thing we need is another Fresh Start event to happen where we have to rush and put people in position to clean these schools.”
Michelle McKissack, who voted to approve ABM’s contract Tuesday alongside Chair Natalie McKinney, said the district is in a “rock and a hard place situation.”
“We’re concerned about issues that were documented a decade ago,” she said.
Other school districts have cited more recent issues with ABM custodial services, including Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee. The company did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment.
MSCS Chief Financial Officer Tito Langston said ABM was chosen based on a rubric that “fairly and objectively” measures vendor performance. The company would only provide services through the end of 2026. Board members are expected to vote on new four-year custodial contracts in May or June.
“When schools start back [after winter break], we need some solution in place,” Langston said. “Our job is to hold any vendor that is in our schools accountable to services.”
Board members pressed district leaders Tuesday to come up with different options, which means a special meeting could be called this month. Langston said the most likely solution will be using existing MSCS staff to fill the gaps.
The district started outsourcing cleaning services in 2013 to save money after the merger of Memphis City and Shelby County schools. That raised concerns about worker pay and service quality at the time, which came to a head in 2022 when the board controversially decided to pay one vendor to manage staff at all schools. One year later, MSCS split services into four different regional contracts.
Three of those original four vendors — ServiceMaster Clean, Parcou, and HES Facilities — were approved by board members for another one-year contract starting Jan. 1, 2026. But Langston said those vendors can’t take over cleaning for the 35 schools in the Northwest region of MSCS, which is what happened this year after Fresh Start was fired.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
