The New Rochelle Board of Education last week quietly settled the nearly half-million dollar lawsuit brought against the school district by Aramark Educational Services in which the food services giant alleged that district officials had engaged in fraud and negligent misrepresentations “designed to induce Aramark to enter into a contract and the district’s failure to satisfy outstanding financial obligations owed to Aramark”.
Fraud? Misrepresentations? By our New Rochelle school officials? Say it ain’t so, Richard.
Aramark Educational Services accused New Rochelle officials of lying about the number of meals served in the public schools and sought a a judgment of $405,031.66 plus interest and attorney fees.
Here is the resolution they don’t want you to see…
RESOLUTION NO. 10-71
RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT WITH THE ARAMARK EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, LLC.
RESOLVED, upon review of the terms of a proposed Settlement Agreement between the Board of Education of the City School District of New Rochelle and ARAMARK educational services, LLC, the Board of Education hereby authorizes the Superintendent of Schools or his designee, following consultation with counsel for the Board, to sign such agreement on behalf of the Board, apply the terms set forth therein.
RESOLVED, that this resolution will become effective immediately.
Aren’t you glad to know that your taxes are going up so the Board of Education can pay lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise the district to write checks for hundreds of thousands more to cover the district’s behind when litigants make public accusations for fraud and misrepresentation and then force the District to settle?
The best part? Quietly slipped into the July 7, 2009 Board Resolutions was this little item rewarding Aramark.
RESOLUTION NO. 10-54
RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A CONTRACT WITH THE ARAMARK MANAGEMENT SERVICES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP FOR THE 2009-2010 SCHOOL YEAR
RESOLVED, that the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New Rochelle, New York, be and hereby approves the continuation of the contracts with the ARAMARK Management Services Limited Partnership, 1717 Arch Street, 42nd floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103, to provide contractual management support services of the school district’s facilities, and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the Board of Education authorizes payment to the ARAMARK Management Services Limited Partnership for such services at an annual fee of $777,848.00 for the 2009 — 2010 school year; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that this resolution shall take effect immediately.
If any reader decides to take it upon themselves to make a Freedom of Information Request to the School District Clerk Liz Saraiva I would be very interested to publish a copy of the contact approved by resolution 10-54 above. You may as well as ask for a copy of the settlement agreement with Aramark (which they will likely not willingly provide).
To make a FOIL request email here: LSaraiva@newrochelle.k12.ny.us
You should use language like this….
Dear Ms. Saraiva,
This is a public records request.
I would like to obtain a copy of the contract with Aramark Management Services Limited Partnership recently approved by the Board of Education per RESOLUTION NO. 10-54.
Where possible I would like records in electronic format. If possible, I would like the electronic documents converted into standard Microsoft Office format (Word, Excel, etc.). I would like all communications including the delivery of documents to take place via email as much as is possible based on the nature of the available records.. I would like the Records Access Officer to certify that the records are genuine. If the documents only exist in paper form I am willing to pay. If the cost of converting the documents to a standard electronic format or making photos copies exceeds $20.00 I would like prior notification of the estimated cost to comply with this records request.
If all they offer is paper you can scan it and send to me or arrange for me to receive the paper directly or through the mail.
PS, the BoE has adopted a policy of ignoring or otherwise subverting my Freedom of Information requests (more coming on this in the next few weeks) so I need reader assistance in this regard.
What I find interesting about this contract is that the BoE sees fit to outsource food services contracts but not security services or cleaning services or snow removal or many other services currently provided by district employees. We may be stuck with tenure which rewards poor teachers at the expense of good teachers but why should have to put up with criminals working in support services roles. Dr. Wagner has raised this issue repeatedly to the BoE on why cleaning/janitorial services are not outsources to a company that can be more efficient and which allows the District to immediately remove problem workers without having to go through the unions or civil service legal process. Want to protect teachers regardless performance, well maybe, but corrupt security guards, maintenance workers and so on? Forget it.
More info here: http://www.aramarkschools.com/
One other interesting note about this matter. The lawsuit was originally reported in the Journal News but it not in the archive service they use. After two weeks articles on lohud.com are taken off the site and put into a database service called Newsbank which is a fee-based archiving service. I checked. Searches for “Aramark” + “New Rochelle” do not show any mention of the case.
HUGE error we have to pay for?
Where did the BOE get this information? Who provided Aramark with this information? Someone should be made accountable for this negligence!