Both of our Listservs have been buzzing with suggestions about recovering the cost for custodial overtime for school related events. Our members shared their best practices and reasons why you should consider charging for custodial overtime even for events for which you’re not charging a rental fee.
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“We charge all groups a custodial fee, regardless of whether we charge them a rental fee/event fee for use of the space, so we don’t lose money on our hard costs. For private groups, we charge $50/hr for custodial fees (which includes a buffer for overhead and overtime). For groups in our ‘inner circle’, we charge custodial fees as cost based on the individual’s hourly rate (plus taxes).”
Lauren Laio – Facility Rentals – The Rashi School, MA
“We charge school groups an overtime custodial cost for events on weekends, to cover the incremental costs. It runs about $30/hour (salary and benefits) and ends up encouraging school groups to have their events on weeknights.”
Amy Cullen – Community Service Coordinator – Shenendehowa Central School District, NY
“I usually bring in custodial substitutes/part-time to cover that particular event, or I flex the custodian’s schedule to avoid the overtime. There are occasions where I have no choice but to pay for the overtime because our substitute list is really short. Believe it or not, my custodians like to have “days off” during the weekdays.”
Erica Saldivar – Maintenance Manager – Anthony, TX
Because educational organizations are often the gathering spot for the communities they serve, facility managers are looking for ways to establish processes to efficiently manage and coordinate the community use of educational facilities.
Our June webcast – featuring Chesterfield County Public Schools, VA and Eanes ISD, TX – outlined best practices for establishing a program for recovering costs for after-hours facility use while still effectively meeting the needs of the community.
From our discussion, I have put together 5 tips for managing the community use of schools: Read more…
Do you normally charge Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc. to use your facilities? How about religious groups?
Chesterfield Community Schools – Per our policy, if an activity (Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, faith-based, civic group, etc.) takes place Monday-Friday between the hours of 7:00 am to 10:00 pm on dates that school is in session (instructional days), then there is no fee to use the facility or for custodial charges. Should the organization decide to use the facility on a weekend or on a date that school is NOT in session (winter break, spring break, etc.) they are charged for the facility fee (according to our fee schedule – student rate for Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc. and adult rate for faith-based, civic groups, etc.) and for the custodial fee.
Guidelines for Cost Recovery for Community Use of Schools
1) Implement proven tactics and policies that are used by peer educational organizations with successful community facility use programs:
- A single coordinator and point of contact for the organization communicates with principals and the community regarding facility use
- Community use groups are separated into categories to charged appropriately
- An events calendar is available on the website for community and your organization’s employees to see.
- A detailed facility use policy describes the conditions/terms of use.
- A request for use form is available online to request usage. That form, once approved and signed, becomes the contract for usage.
- A detailed fee table is available for users to estimate cost of usage. Read more…
When allowing community groups to use your educational organization’s facilities for events and activities, it is essential that you require those third party groups to have the proper insurance. You must protect your school from liability issues and manage the risks related to community use of your facilities, such as personal injury and participant health/safety, as well as potential damage to facilities and mechanical failures.
Our peers on the Facility Events Listserv shared their policies regarding insurance requirements and coverage limits, including this best practice from Rina Prasad at West Contra Costa USD in California: Read more…
Facility Masters is pleased to announce that we have just launched a second, free listserv dedicated exclusively to sharing best practices for Event Scheduling, Community Facility Use, and Cost Recovery at educational organizations. Our peers frequently ask each other to share documents and resources they have developed as part of their facility use and cost recovery programs, so we have started a second listserv to meet this specific need.
The Facility Masters Event Scheduling Listserv promotes best practices and processes for managing educational facility use and provides a national network for educational facility and event scheduling operations leaders to ask questions, get answers and share best practices with their peers.
If you would like to participate in our free Event Scheduling Listserv, simply send a blank email to join-fmeventscheduling@talk.netatlantic.com to join. Once you confirm your membership, you will receive a welcome email with instructions on how to send and reply to messages on the Events Scheduling Listserv.
If you have any colleagues who might be interested in participating in the Event Scheduling Listserv, please forward them this information.
If you have any questions, please let me know. We look forward to sharing solutions and learning event scheduling best practices with all of you!
And don’t forget to visit the Facility Use, Scheduling and Event Management Resources Page on our site to access free download shared by your peers, including example facility use agreements, terms of use and fee structures.
Our speaker from today’s Facility Masters Webcast on Managing Community Use of Educational Facilities, Devon Rauenzahn from Spokane Public Schools in Washington, shared several helpful links on her district’s site regarding their community facility use policies and procedures. You can get more information and see samples of their facility use documents.
Spokane Public Schools, WA – Links to the District’s Policies for Community Use of Facilities:
We have also added some of Spokane Public School’s sample documents to the Facility Use, Scheduling and Event Management Resources area of our website. Those documents include: Sample Facility Use Agreement, Sample Facility Use Application, Sample Fee Schedule, and Sample Rules for Facility Usage.
On a more practical note, if your key control is outdated and you have issues that must be addressed, perhaps start out with a new campus master keying system, one building at a time as funding is available. That way you have made positive progress without busting the budget. This also limits the number of keys that authorized staff must deal with.
One of our colleagues is installing keyless entry locks at our most used doors. This way they will be able to control access via the computer. After this they are planning to change all other exterior locks to a system that the key has to be cut at the factory. This will give them a better control of the building. They are not concerned with miss use of interior keys.
I thought that you would like to know what one community in MA is charging for the community use of fields
What do others charge?
| Location |
Community N-Profit |
Community F- Profit |
Non- Community F – Profit |
| Non-Community |
| N-Profit |
|
No Minimum |
2-Hr. Minimum |
4-Hr. Minimum |
| Fields |
| Stadium |
$75.00 |
$150.00 |
$200.00 |
| Track, Press Box, or Score Board |
$25.00 |
$50.00 |
$75.00 |
| Stadium Lights |
$30.00 |
$40.00 |
$50.00 |
| Game Administrator |
$35.00 |
$50.00 |
$65.00 |
| Exterior Bathroom |
$20.00 |
$35.00 |
$50.00 |
| Practice Field |
$40.00 |
$80.00 |
$120.00 |
| Practice Field Lights |
$25.00 |
$30.00 |
$40.00 |
|
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