Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
A tentative agreement to keep the Neshaminy School District from outsourcing food service workers was reached on Sunday.
The tentative deal was announced Sunday night by district spokesman Chris Stanley. The terms of the deal were not immediately released, as the deal still needs to be voted on by the union.
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District officials and food service staff, who are members of Neshaminy Education Support Professionals Association (NESPA), have been meeting over the past weeks to work on a deal.
“The Board of School Directors and the NESPA Food Service Negotiating Team have tentatively come to an agreement that will enable the district to meet their goals in regard to Food Service while keeping the current food service employees on district staff,” Stanley said in an email to reporters.
For this Wednesday’s upcoming school board meeting, the agenda lays out a vote to approve Aramark as the district’s food service contractor if a deal with NESPA was not reached.
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Under the latest NESPA four-year contract, the district would be able to outsource food service workers. At recent board meetings, NESPA members and union leadership have voiced concerns about job losses and worries of what would happen if a private company ran the cafeterias.
NESPA member Lou McFeeley spoke during board meetings earlier this spring and told officials about the impact the job losses would have on NESPA workers, who largely live in Neshaminy.
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NESPA President Mindy Andersen said in 2014 that 80 percent of the district’s support staff live in the district and the average salary is $28,000.
Several school board members have said at recent meetings that they would work to keep avoid outsourcing. Board member Mark Shubin has stated that he feels the food service department could be run better and he was interested to hear what outside firms said.
Since the new NESPA contract was signed in 2014, several positions have already been eliminated in the district. Recently, some vacant transportation department positions have been filled with contractors.
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The Save Our Schools (SOS) candidates – Robert Sanna, Robert Feather, Staci O’Brien and Karen Lowry – released a statement a short time after the news of the tentative deal and called out the timing of the agreement, which came less than two days before a buzzed-about primary election.
NESPA covers roughly 500 staff members ranging from bus drivers to IT workers.
