Hot potato in the school cafeteria: more districts outsource their food services, but some raise questions about personnel relations and savings

School Administrator, Sept, 2004 by Kate Beem

"I personally think there's no more work involved in hiring a qualified food service director to manage the program," says Mackey, who estimates that only five of the 303 school districts in her state employ proprietary firms. "A qualified, capable food service director can do everything for a school district that a management company can."

That argument worked in Ohio's 7,200-student Brunswick City Schools, a suburban district 25 miles south of Cleveland. More than a decade ago, the school board there hired ARA, now Aramark, to run the district's ailing food service program. After three years, the program still operated in the red, says Mary Grace Kenny, the district's food service coordinator.

In 1994, the school board considered switching to another company and possibly closing the kitchens in some schools. Some veteran food service staff feared that a new company would eliminate full-time positions and cut benefits to slash costs. So they devised a plan. The employees asked the school board to give them a year to run the food service department. If it wasn't in the black by then, they would agree to step aside and let the outsiders run the show.

"We felt that since all of us lived and worked and had children and grandchildren in the Brunswick school system that we could do a much better job than an outside company," says Kenny, who at that time was managing an elementary school cafeteria.

Employees made concessions to effect the change, including giving up paid holidays and snow days. But the self-operated program broke even in the 1994-95 school year and has operated in the black ever since.

Now a committee of food service employees runs the department. Kenny oversees it, filing state reports and centralizing orders. The department makes enough money to purchase its own equipment and pay salaries and retirement benefits.

A Hot Button

Any way you slice it, outsourcing can be a sticky prospect for school districts.

The monthly magazine School Foodservice and Nutrition, published by the American School Food Service Association, addressed the simmering debate in its December 2003 issue. Angry letters to the editor appearing a few months later left no doubt about the controversial nature of the subject. One reader called the articles "inflammatory" and "biased" and said she wondered whether she should renew her membership.

With membership from self-operated food service operations and those that hire contract management companies, ASFSA sits squarely in the middle of the fray. The association takes no official position on the subject, however.

"What we're concerned about, no matter who's running it, is that the program is providing nutritious meals for kids," Wittrock says.

That's the primary concern of food service management companies, too, adds DeScenza. His company has been in the K-12 food service market for 30 years, working mostly in small to midsize districts. But the company of late has won some contracts with larger districts. Chartwells currently provides food services in one-third of Chicago Public Schools.