Modesto City Schools board vacillates on outsourcing counselors

In-house or outsource? It's a question that many businesses have grappled with during this recession. This summer Modesto City Schools is in the same quandary.

The work isn't making widgets, however. It is face-to-face support services for students and their parents.

And the outsource company isn't some faceless corporation in the developing world. It is a local nonprofit, the Center for Human Services, that has provided such services for 22 years.

The Modesto school board was poised to renew the center's $246,758 contract three weeks ago, when pink-slipped counselor Consuelo Waggel went to the podium and beseeched trustees to reconsider.

"Please keep those jobs in-district," Waggel told the board at its June 21 meeting.

The board held off signing the contract and revisited the matter at its meeting Monday night. At that meeting trustees leaned toward a compromise, reducing the contract to bring back one laid-off counselor. They will vote on the matter at their Aug. 2 meeting.

At issue are services to be paid with funds dedicated to Downey High School, La Loma Junior High and 10 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade campuses, administrator Craig Rydquist said. Their budgets are set, as are funding requirements for services.

"There's no wiggle room on the rate of pay ... and a set number of hours," Rydquist said.

The private contract costs the district $40.80 per hour, more than half of which is administrative overhead. Even the newest counselor employee, however, costs Modesto City Schools $81.83 per hour in wages and benefits, according to district calculations.

Modesto's lone laid-off counselor was willing to take a "significant reduction" in pay to be eligible for rehiring as a student assistant specialist, and the union would not fight the move, Ryd-quist said.

The district's lower wage offer to the counselor was about $40 an hour, counselor Ellen Boley said outside the meeting Monday.

Boley read a statement signed by 12 counselors to the board Monday.

"Highly trained professionals should not be asked to accept a lower salary than their peers," Boley said. The statement suggests the district not contract with the center and use that $200,000 to pay counselors their usual rate.

Bee education reporter Nan Austin can be reached at naustin@modbee.com or 578-2339.