A 15-year veteran of Seattle Schools' Nutrition Services said the district's desire to consolidate food preparation at its headquarters instead of at its individual middle schools and high schools, is a direction that will lead to job losses and poorer food quality.
Lynn Lobdell, manager of the McClure Middle School cafeteria said she is baffled by seemingly contradicting district action. She said it wants to consolidate food preparation at its headquarters in south downtown.
Yet she said it has purchased food preparation equipment for her school and others. Lobdell said the district bought McClure three ovens, two steamers a dishwasher, freezer and a hot box all in the last two years.
She further cited that the district has the McClure cafeteria using paper plates instead of reusable plastic trays, and that decision is costing the district $6,300 a year. She added that should food preparation go bulk at the district headquarters, one of her employees would lose her job and the remaining two would have their hours cut.
She said about 30 people in the Nutrition Services department would lose their jobs district wide if food preparation went into the central kitchen, where currently most of the elementary schools' breakfasts and lunches are prepared. One of her chief concerns is that the quality of the food will suffer if it needs to be trucked and frozen.
"In the last five years we've had several schools rebuilt that have production kitchens," Lobdell said, citing Ballard and West Seattle high schools in particular. "They [Seattle Schools] have been saying that this has been in the making for years, but then why have the done the new schools with full production kitchens?"
However, in email dated Feb. 11 and addressed to kitchen employees and Nutrition Services staff, Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson wrote that she has toured the central kitchen and wrote that the "quality of food will not be compromised. The central kitchen production, process, food quality and execution is amazing.
"The reason the central kitchen was built was specific to transitioning to a central kitchen that served the entire district, we are finally making that transition."
That transition is largely being made to bring down costs and add uniformity to a department that has been struggling of late, according to a recent report. The Council of the Great City Schools performed a survey of Seattle Schools' Nutrition Services and found that not only is it top-heavy in labor 60 percent as opposed to the average 45 percent nationwide, but it has been losing money.
The report showed that the district lost $800,000 in 2008, $1.3 million in 2007 and $100,000 in 2006.
In addition to several mismanagement problems throughout the department, the report also showed that the department could reduce its labor costs by nearly $1 million each year by converting the secondary schools from production sites to bulk sites using the central kitchen- an assessment Goodloe-Johnson is not likely to ignore.
In her quest to save the district money, Goodloe-Johnson has resorted to school closures and student-body reconfiguration to stem a $25 million shortfall.[[In-content Ad]]
