In California and elsewhere the trend toward outsourcing, or contracting-out, has been growing at an alarming rate.
For public schools, there is an outside company available for virtually every classified service. While it makes good public rhetoric to proclaim cost-savings for cash strapped schools, outsourcing brings with it a host of problems—and in many cases, it produces little or no cost-savings at all.
Classified employees have become a target
Everyday, California’s school employees – instructional assistants, school security guards, school bus drivers and others – work hard to educate and serve our children.
In tight budget times many of these dedicated employees have become a target for outsourcing. Sometimes called “privatization,” school districts are exploring ways to hand over important public service jobs to huge, private corporations who pay their employees lower wages and provide few, if any, health benefits.
We should not sacrifice the jobs of hard working public employees to help the profits of big corporations, eliminating the laws that require them to justify cost savings and guarantee quality, so they can engage in unregulated contracts and increase their profits at the taxpayers’ expense.
SB 1419 provides contracting safeguards
In 2002, California passed SB 1419, a law that established reasonable safeguards for school districts to follow prior to contracting-out classified services. The law doesn’t prohibit outsourcing, it simply establishes common-sense requirements—such as competitive bidding, fingerprinting and background checks, and proof of cost savings—to protect our students and taxpayers.