June 23, 2018
A child born on the same day as the oldest maintenance work order on file with Shelby County Schools would now be in middle school.
The district has a database reflecting 25,000 pending maintenance requests dating to 2006.
That doesn't mean 25,000 projects are left undone. An unknown number of requests were made multiple times, and the system filed them each separately, according to district officials. A chunk of the requests may be from schools that are closed, often due to the building's condition, or occupied by charters or other entities now responsible for facility upkeep.
But the real number of unaddressed requests is a mystery.
Chief of Operations Beth Phalen told the school board this week that she discovered employees were not properly using the online system to handle maintenance requests. Either they were using other methods of deciding which projects to fix, or they were not marking completed projects in the system. Teachers and principals still use it to submit work orders.
Many of those orders were likely addressed, Phalen said, possibly through other means of summoning staff to fix a broken toilet or a window that wouldn't close just right.
Unknown number of current requests need to be resolved
There's just no way to tell in the current system how many projects are left to do. The district is in the process of assessing the list for overlooked big-ticket items. Presumably, ones requesting help a decade ago for tasks like moving furniture, don't require much follow-up.
"We’re trying to inventory the condition of the schools instead of go back and try to rationalize 25,000 work orders that are over 10 years old," she said.
Phalen is also asking to spend $2.5 million by the end of the fiscal year toward projects on the list for the past year and a half. The money will go to plumbing, electrical, carpentry, painting, lawn care, turf repair and tree trimming. The board will also vote Tuesday whether to pay for larger items including new fire alarms for six schools, intercom systems for three buildings and the purchase of new work vehicles.
"This is our effort to try to draw down the maintenance queue within the schools," Phalen told the board.
Phalen said she's not sure why the maintenance staff hadn't used the system properly. But Phelan said personnel cuts over the years resulted in fewer people chasing a rising number of requests.
"I know you’re drinking out of a fire hose," board member and facilities committee chairman Billy Orgel said of the overwhelming number of requests.
But there's no way the district has 25,000 items that need fixing, he said, and he knows from experience.
"You react every time I call," he said.
Board member Chris Caldwell said the exact number is less of a concern than the overall problem.
"To me what it illuminates is there's a lot of issues in the schools that need to be fixed immediately," he said.
Some work orders filed in 2010 still an issue
Board member Teresa Jones said she was thrown off hearing the work orders date to 2006, and encouraged the administration not to assume ones that old were taken resolved either by legacy Shelby County Schools or Memphis City Schools before the two districts merged.
"To just say we’re just going to go with recent, then you miss, to me, a category of work orders that may have just been overlooked for years and years and years," she said.
Stephanie Love, a board member with children in SCS schools, said she knows of work orders filed in 2010 where "the issue is still an issue."
District spokeswoman Kristin Tallent said SCS completes about 44,000 work orders each year, and this year is on pace to eclipse that by about 20 percent.
Maintenance staff following the merger in 2013 underwent a 40 percent cut, she said, from nearly 600 employees to the currently level of 359. Even with the tens of thousands of closed work orders, there's always more to do, she said.
The district also has crumbling and aging buildings, and a list of major deferred maintenance projects nearing $500 million worth of work.
Tallent said the backlog was discovered when Phalen's team added a new head of facilities, and the staff did a review of maintenance work orders to determine if processes could be improved.
SCS to receive $90 million for improvements
"The purpose of that was to improve customer service and to find obviously where there were any weaknesses," she said.
It was during that process staff discovered 25,000 work orders listed as pending, Tallent said.
"Some of these things are issues that are easily fixed, or might have been fixed already and it just hasn’t been properly reflected in the system," she said.
The district this year will receive $90 million from Shelby County for capital improvements, which includes new construction to replace the aging infrastructure.
"In years past, we just haven't gotten the capital dollars to fix all the things we need to fix in our buildings," Tallent said.
As the district reviews its next steps, she said, more staff could be part of the solution.
"We will have a treatment plan that could include a request for more resources," she said.