PROVIDENCE — Jamie Cannarozzi spends her mornings preparing her classroom at Carl G. Lauro Elementary School for her students’ arrival, but what she does often goes beyond the typical tidying and setting up that one might expect.

Dealing with a roof leak along the length of her classroom windows occupied much of her pre-class time last year.

“I would come in in the morning and spend up to 30 minutes emptying buckets, drying the floor and putting the buckets back before the students came in,” she said during a recent phone interview. “I just feel like our building, and the district in general, is kind of in a constant state of triage.”

Leaky roofs, discolored tap water, broken bathroom stall doors, rodent sightings and the presence of asbestos and lead are among some of the issues described to The Providence Journal in interviews and noted in the Johns Hopkins University report on the Providence schools released in June. (The city said there are currently no “active abatement projects” regarding asbestos and lead in the schools.)

But work orders recently obtained by The Journal from Aramark, the facilities management company that serves the Providence Public Schools, show a detailed snapshot of the maintenance issues handled by the company over the summer, when city officials were attempting to spruce up the buildings before the start of the school year and just months before the state assumed control of the district.

Between June 1 and Sept. 30 — a period of 122 days — Aramark received 1,846 requests for maintenance through its task-scheduling system.

Among the requests, 45 contained the word “safety” in reference to a safety hazard or concern, 121 mentioned the word “leak” and 56 had the word “hole,” usually in reference to hole in a wall, floor or ceiling.

One request submitted for Esek Hopkins Middle School read, “203: lower shelf doors falling off, VERY LARGE HOLE IN WALL NEEDS REPAIR FOR AT LEAST 6 MONTHS NOW.”

Another noted a sinkhole in the front of the building at William D'Abate Elementary School that needed to be filled.

Some requests raised alarms about broken doors and windows that could interfere with a lockdown or allow people to gain unauthorized access to the school.

At Lauro Elementary School, the push bar on the gym entrance door was broken, “***This is a safety issue for lock down purposes***,” reads the work order. A ground-level window at Gilbert Stuart Middle School was “about to fall out,” according to a maintenance request.

There was a report of “yellow water” in the library at Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, and requests for Lillian Feinstein Elementary School at Sackett Street and Mount Pleasant High School mentioned electrical outlets that were “throwing sparks.”

Students say their environment at school has a major impact on their motivation to attend and their ability to learn.

“It feels like a chore to walk through the building,” said Yan Sosa, an 18-year-old senior at Classical High School, who said there is mold on the wall in his school’s stairwell and that he recently saw a photo circulating on Snapchat of a mouse inside the building.

The current state of the schools can be blamed on deferred maintenance caused by a four-year moratorium on state-financed school construction that prohibited districts from obtaining reimbursement for construction costs, according to the city.

“For communities in financial distress, like Providence during the time the moratorium was in effect, school repairs were often difficult to achieve without State reimbursement,” city spokeswoman Patricia Socarras wrote in an email. “The first major investment school facilities saw was in 2016 and the City has invested $42 million in infrastructure improvements to date.”

Cannarozzi, who has since switched classrooms, said she heard from the teacher in her old room that the roof leak is back this year.

Socarras wrote in an email that the Carl G. Lauro Elementary School roof was repaired over the summer, but the building’s envelope is scheduled for more repairs in 2020.

In the fall of 2018, the Providence City Council approved a four-year contract extension for Aramark, and the city will pay the company about $18.4 million this year, according to city records. The company has been serving the district since 2005 and employs 215 people in the Providence schools, according to Francis McMahon, president of the company.

A financial analysis of the Providence schools released Friday by the Rhode Island Department of Education showed that the Providence Public Schools spend about 25% more per pupil on custodial services compared with similar districts.

Based on the city’s estimate, Providence spends about $571 per pupil on custodial services. The next-highest spending district is Cranston, which spends $475 per pupil.

When asked if Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration was satisfied with Aramark’s performance in the schools, Socarras wrote, “The City and the State worked closely with Aramark to ensure facilities were ready at the start of the school year, and we have continued to work with Aramark to ensure facilities are warm, safe and dry for our students.”

She wrote that the city and the state Department of Education will execute a request for proposals “at the appropriate time” and that that process will determine the future of Aramark’s contract.

But the state’s financial analysis of the schools, conducted by Ernst & Young, said that there has been a lack of competition among vendors seeking to contract with the city on capital projects and maintenance, leading to higher prices.

In 2014, the city received bids for school facilities management from two other companies — GCA Services Group and Sodexo — but Aramark was the lowest bidder.

The city awarded the company a five-year contract starting at $16.4 million for the first year with annual increases based on the Consumer Price Index. The agreement allows for five additional extension years.

Over the summer, the city also began pursuing $20 million in school improvements across the district, but half of the projects are still under construction or in the design phase. Socarras wrote that all projects are on schedule and have an operating timeline of two years.

The Department of Education has approved an additional $278 million for projects that will take place over the next five years.

But no one invested in the Providence Public School District denies that the condition of its facilities is an urgent issue.

At a Friday press conference on the financial analysis of the district, state Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green described seeing netting placed above the front door at Mount Pleasant High School to keep pieces of pediment from falling.

“This can’t be our solution,” she said.

Cannarozzi described the conditions at Lauro Elementary School as “distracting at best and dangerous at worst.”

“We keep hearing from politicians, ‘Warm, safe and dry,’” she said. “It’s none of those things.”

- With reports from

Linda Borg

— mlist@ providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7121

On Twitter:

@madeleine_list