Board member refuses to support $12M painting contract extension without quality controls

Board member Lisa Santos told the Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee on Nov. 12 she could not, in good conscience, support a $12,000,000 contract extension for painting and related maintenance without clear, enforceable quality-control measures.

Santos said recent walkthroughs of district schools showed paint jobs that she described as unacceptable and urged the district to make quality an explicit criterion for future extensions. "I personally cannot support this contract extension without any sort of guarantees of quality being part of how we continue to choose to spend money with a contractor," she said.

Facilities and procurement staff responded that the district maintains contractor review and debarment mechanisms and that project managers and regular inspections ensure work meets plans and specifications. Facilities director Mr. Miklow (speaking for staff) said the district stopped performing separate "quality control" inspections some years ago but that assigned project managers and inspection processes verify that specifications are met and that the district has the ability to terminate or debar poor-performing vendors.

Staff committed to take the board's concern back to the inspection team and design staff and to explore ways to incorporate quality-control language into future extensions and scoring criteria. Procurement staff said that departments go through a sign-off process before extensions are approved and that contractor performance ratings are used in extension decisions; facilities staff offered to investigate the two schools Santos named and to follow up with the board.

Why it matters: The conversation focused on stewardship of public funds and whether existing performance-review processes are sufficient for multi-million-dollar extensions. Santos said the proposed extension term begins in January 2026 and urged that the board consider adding a quality metric to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure that school facilities present appropriate learning environments.

What was decided: Staff pledged follow-up to assess whether the current inspection criteria and contractor-rating mechanisms sufficiently address quality concerns and to return with recommended changes that could be applied to the next board meeting or contract extension cycle. The committee was briefed that the reported contract extensions were informational (not a vote) and that processes exist for addressing vendor nonperformance.

Representative quote: "This is over $12,000,000 worth of work that we're talking about. To me, it seems unacceptable that quality would not be something that we look at," Santos said.

Next steps: Facilities staff will examine the specific schools cited, meet with project managers and the inspection team, and propose how quality-control metrics might be reintegrated into procurement criteria for future extensions.