A just-released independent study of the Houston ISD’s maintenance department came up with 23 key points that it says should change in the operation of the district’s Construction, Facility Services Group — not the least among them that it has too many layers, too little planning, poor response times and generates way too much overtime.
According to the assessment done by the Council of Great City Schools, CFS (as it is known) needs to develop a “comprehensive preventive maintenance program.”
The physical working environment needs improvement: “Some of the regional offices are not in the areas they serve, resulting in excessive travel times to maintenance jobs.”
Oh and there’s a morale problem, too.
The report comes as little surprise since complaints have been fairly
steady in recent years that if something goes wrong at an HISD school,
it can take a very long time to get fixed.
Most of these points are things that Issa Dadoush, the new general
manager of the department, picked up in his two months on the job, and
some are already being changed, he says.
When he first came to HISD’s CFS department (after 22 years in the
City of Houston, where he was director of the General Services
Department), Dadoush said he was told it was understaffed. That was not
the case, he believes, rather while some schools were understaffed
others were overstaffed. By reallocating custodians and plant managers and by
changing the hours of some to include working till 9 p.m. instead of
everyone going home at 2:30 or 3 p.m., Dadoush said the department has
already increased productivity and cut down on overtime which last year
totaled $6.5 million.
Also missing from the HISD department, according to the assessment,
are annual employee evaluations, effective internal communications, and
job training.
Dadoush agrees with much of the report, especially that the
facilities need a change — the sound of water leaking into the building
could be heard in his office today — and promises that many changes are
underway.
“More than 90 percent of the employees here are honest, decent and
hardworking,” he stressed. “We need to empower people. If you touch it,
stay with it till it’s done.”
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
