THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210652
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
A private company that for the past five years has managed cleaning services for the city's public schools has taken legal steps to block a contract between the School Board and a competing company.
In complaints filed with the school system and in Norfolk Circuit Court, Chicago-based ServiceMaster Management Services claims the School Board acted in ``bad faith'' and treated the company unfairly in its effort to renew its contract.
After several weeks of evaluating bids from ServiceMaster and two competitors, the School Board on Sept. 22, authorized Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. to negotiate a contract with Marriott Management Services Corp. A contract with Marriott was signed Oct. 12.
On the same day, ServiceMaster filed a formal protest with the school district challenging the board's Sept. 22 action.
ServiceMaster, hired in 1989 on a five-year contract that expired this fall, filed a motion Tuesday in Circuit Court to temporarily block the Marriott agreement.
In a hearing Wednesday, Judge Morris B. Gutterman dismissed the motion, ruling it premature because the School Board had not been given adequate time to respond to ServiceMaster's protest.
Nichols last week said the school system ``conducted ourselves in a business-like manner.'' The School Board plans to meet in private today to review its options. Deputy City Attorney Daniel Hagemeister said the School Board has until Monday to respond to ServiceMaster's protest.
A ServiceMaster spokeswoman in corporate headquarters said the company's next step will depend on whether the School Board stands by the decision to hire Marriott.
``We take our business very seriously and we take serving our customers seriously,'' said Claire Buchan, ServiceMaster's vice president for communications.
In its complaint, ServiceMaster claims the School Board was biased against the company by an ``erroneous and patently unfair'' process.
The company blames the bias in part on a Norfolk schools internal audit of the 1989 ServiceMaster contract. The audit, ordered by Nichols, was critical of language contained in the original contract and also gave examples of ``avoidable costs'' of several hundred thousand dollars that were built into the contract.
ServiceMaster disputed the results of the audit. So did the school system's own business and finance department, which issued a report Sept. 27 questioning the audit's accuracy. In the complaint, ServiceMaster charges that the School Board failed to consider the business and finance department's report before approving the Marriott deal.
Nichols and other school officials have praised ServiceMaster's work, but said the decision boils down to money. The $722,036 contract with Marriott is about $500,000 less than the $1.2 million that Norfolk schools paid ServiceMaster in 1993-94.
In Virginia Beach, complaints by teachers and custodians led that School Board to vote in July to end its five-year agreement with ServiceMaster after only one year. But reportedly faced with threats of a lawsuit, school officials worked out a deal to shorten the contract to three years and to eliminate the company's supervision of school employees after Jan. 1.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUITS NORFOLK PUBLIC SCHOOLS by CNB