District rehires food service company at loss
By KRISTI PIHL Staff Reporter
The Stanwood-Camano School Board unanimously approved the 2009- 10 food service contract with Chartwells, a management company.
The district received no other applications from management companies, and no viable applications for an inhouse food service manager.
The approved contract guarantees the district's loss will not be more than $133,830 for this coming school year.
It's critically important for children to be adequately nourished, said Ken Christoferson, school board member. Still, the district needs to run its food service program in the most effective way possible.
"This item is on a lot of people's radar," he said.
The district needs to take a look at the type of reporting it gets from the food service program monthly to ensure that board members are aware of the program's status, Christoferson said.
The district will pay Chartwells a management fee of 3.75 cents per meal, totaling an estimated $18,609, as well as an administrative fee of $39,000. In addition, the district is supposed to receive about $24,000 in vendor rebates, discounts and incentives, lowering the district's food costs.
The district's net loss in food service this year is estimated around $107,000 to $112,000, rather than the guaranteed limit of $192,470.
By the end of August, the school district will have lost $370,000 to $375,000 in the four years it has used Chartwells. In the three years prior to the switch to Chartwells, the district's food service program gained profits of $35,171.
As the assistant superintendent of operations, Mike Olson will oversee the food service program.
Olson said he will work with the food service manager to make sure that the hiring committee's conditions to the contract are met. Those conditions include up to 10 hours of training, meet- ings with the food service director and kitchen managers for elementary and middle schools to discuss menu options and technical support to simplify daily reporting.
The district has also requested that Chartwells complete a study of the food service program to identify the changes needed for the program to be in the black for the school year. The report is due by Jan. 31.
Olson said he will work with the food service director and Chartwells' regional staff to monitor the progress of the study.
In other school board news:
• Northshore School District in Bothell, which has a tech levy, has donated about $278,000 worth of computers and related equipment to the school district, said Jeremy Wellner, of the district's Technology Group. Among the equipment was 431 iMac G4 computers, 45 PowerMac G4 desktop towers, seven xServe G5 file servers, eight general-purpose PC servers, a switch and a hard drive array.
The district has spent about $18,000 for equipment not included in the donation, such as power cords and more RAM, Wellner said.
Before the donation, the district had 667 iMac G3 computers 6- to 10-years-old as part of its 2,100 computers, he said. Now, that number is reduced to 291 iMac G3s. The donated iMac G4 computers are 5- to 6-yearsold, and have replaced the computer labs in all the elementary schools, the G3 labs at Stanwood High School, Port Susan Middle School's library lab, Stanwood Middle School's library and teaching labs, the library equipment in all the schools, and staff member G3 computers at the elementary schools, he said.
