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

Even so, some opposed our move to privatize the food operation. I smiled as a couple of board members reminded us of a "failed" custodial outsourcing venture a few years earlier that in my view had been a rousing success. Admittedly, the contractor is no longer in the district, primarily because of its occasional "not quite in time" delivery system for cleaning supplies, which became the catalyst for a successful union campaign to return to local management.

As a direct result of that venture into outsourcing and the subsequent hiring of an outstanding manager who understood what not to jettison from the contractor's operation, we now have better procedures, better equipment, better spending priorities and, most importantly, cleaner buildings than ever.

Multiple Success

Our board will be much less likely to abandon its contract for food service management. Meal quality and nutritional value have improved, particularly in the a la carte line where students no longer can purchase a bag of french fries and call it a meal.

While some might suggest that food quality is subjective, there also is the undeniable fact that student participation rose in the first year by 40 percent, from 350,999 to 491,748 meals served. Participation continued to grow in year two, even after the novelty had worn off.

Finally, there is the financial picture. Meal prices haven't gone down, but they are no higher than they would have been without the private contractor, and our program is on better financial footing than at any time since 1989.

The new program is not without challenges. Offering five meal choices every day and feeding so many children have combined to create more work. Food service employees are concerned that the increased workload has left them with less time to clean and has created stress in the workplace. A campaign in some buildings to return to a single-option menu has spawned cries from a few teachers that having so many choices is stressing 1st graders, although we have noted that most young children handle the broader array of choices on most restaurant menus with confidence and alacrity.

A New Challenge

Our next question was much tougher: Would benefits to children and the school district be sufficient to warrant moving the production side of our operation, primarily cooks and cashiers, to the contractor? Language that would give the board the right to expand the outsourcing initiative was the sole source of a standoff at the bargaining table for more than a year. The dispute brought faculty, staff and parents to school board meetings to plead with the board not to take any food service employees off the school district payroll.

Our district relies heavily on data to inform decisions. Board members wanted hard facts for this one before making a commitment.

Initially, our search of literature found little information on the topic of outsourcing beyond the propaganda of organizations on two extremes of the issue--those claiming outsourcing is one of the greatest evils in our society and those believing privatization to be the solution to all government inefficiencies.