Maricopa County school district turning to prison labor to cut costs. Here's why

Citing its tight budget and a failed request for funding that went to voters, a Maricopa County school district is turning to prison labor for cheap janitorial and landscaping work.

The Gila Bend Unified School District will pay inmates from Lewis Prison in Buckeye 50 cents per hour for work on campus that includes cleaning school floors, weeding, emptying trash and maintaining sports fields after its governing board Thursday approved a contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections.

The work will only be done when students are not on campus, said Superintendent Robert Varner.

The contract will cost the district approximately $18,000 for 18 months, far cheaper than any other option, Varner said. Hiring one additional maintenance staff member would cost between $40,000 to $45,000 per year, including benefits, he said, and contracting a landscaping company would be expensive.

The district serves 465 elementary and high school students in Gila Bend, a small, rural community.

“Many districts can afford a whole grounds department of three or four guys just doing grounds,” Varner said. “We don’t have that luxury.”

District cites failure of budget override request that went to voters last year

Varner first presented the idea of contracting inmates for maintenance work to the governing board in December, the month after the district's request to continue its maintenance and operations budget override failed by just 11 votes. In all, 153 votes were cast.

If it had been approved, the 15% override request would have allowed the district to keep its current override, which voters approved in 2017. It allows the district to increase its maintenance and operations budget by 15% through property taxes and would have helped fund staff salaries and programs like full-day kindergarten, said Varner. Since the request was rejected, the district's override will now be incrementally phased out, though the district is considering trying again with voters.

The measure's failure meant the district had to look for places to cut costs, Varner said.

The district’s full-day kindergarten program was non-negotiable and would be kept, he said. The district also has a preschool program that it wants to continue to support even though it doesn’t receive enough grant money to cover it.

“There are programs that we want to continue, so my job is to … balance the budget and make sure that we support those programs that are important to the community,” Varner said. “When you don’t pass an override, you have to look at areas where you can sustain your budget.”

His philosophy, he said, is to look farthest away from the classroom for budget cuts.

Contracting inmates for janitorial and landscaping work will free up the existing maintenance department to do other things like painting, electrical work and plumbing, Varner said. And only having to pay a thousand dollars a month to get that work done helps the budget, he said.

Currently, the district has a maintenance staff of five full-time individuals and one part-time individual, and all of them are spread thin, Varner said.

"Our guys are constantly scrambling," he said. "Our guys drive buses; they do a little bit of everything."

The district also has "tons of acreage" to keep up, Varner said. "It's a very large area of land, and fields are spread out."

District says inmates won't work while students are on campus

The district declined to share a copy of the labor contract, citing security reasons. Varner said the contract includes language that prohibits inmates classified as sexual predators or offenders from working with the district.

Any cleaning of the school building will take place after 8 p.m., when school is out and after-school activities have ended. Landscaping will only be done on the weekends and Mondays, when there's no school. He estimates between five and 10 inmates will work about 15 hours per week on landscaping and about 20 hours per week on janitorial work.

If there's a school event, like a sports game or parent-teacher conferences, the district will cancel inmate work for the day. Inmates also won't be allowed to work in the school's kitchen, where there are sharp objects, or the nurse's office or district office, where student records are kept, he said.

Supervision will be provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry — the school district will pay the supervisor's fees, which don't include benefits — and the district has cameras "everywhere," Varner said.

It's not the first time the district has contracted with the state prison system for similar work. Prior to the pandemic, before Varner became the district's superintendent, Gila Bend Unified had a similar agreement with Lewis Prison. But the work stopped after COVID-19 hit, Varner said.

On Thursday, three board members voted to approve the contract, while one opposed and one abstained. The meetings are not recorded or livestreamed, according to the district, and board members could not be reached for comment.

Gila Bend Unified is not the only school district in Arizona that looks to prison labor to cut costs.

A 2022 Arizona Republic investigation found that at least 21 K-12 public school districts across the state contracted with the Department of Corrections between 2017-2021, including Gila Bend Unified. The school districts, most of which were members of the Arizona Rural Schools Association, paid inmates 50 cents per hour for work like building maintenance, groundskeeping, repairing HVACs, painting, mopping, emptying trash and plumbing. Most of the contracts obtained by The Republic during that investigation included language that prohibited inmates classified as sexual predators or offenders.

Madeleine Parrish covers K-12 education. Reach her at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County school district turns to prison labor to cut costs