FPS staff report
September 14, 2009
This fall students at three schools in the Carrollton Exempted Village School District started eating packaged meals.
The meals are provided by Preferred Meals, based in Illinois, to students at Carrollton elementary, Dellroy elementary and Bell-Herron Middle school. The same meals were provided last school year to students at Augusta elementary school.
According to Mrs. Kitty Weir, Food Services supervisor for the school district, the first couple of days at Bell-Herron Middle School were chaotic. “But after a few adjustments things have been working well,” Mrs. Weir told members of the Carrollton Board of Education at their Sept. 8 meeting.
She said the students have adjusted to the pre-packaged meals. “They just basically ‘grab and go’, making the lunch line move more quickly,” she added.
Mrs. Weir explained the lunch participation for the first week of school was down 10% from last year district wide from 43 to 33%. The highest decreases were 14% at Bell-Herron and 13% at Dellroy.
Other decreases were 9% at Augusta, 11% at Carrollton elementary and 6% at Carrollton High School, where students are still fed lunches prepared in the school cafeteria.
According to a cafeteria comparison chart distributed to the School board and press at the meeting, the average weekly meal servings for the 2008-09 school year at the five schools are as follows:
Augusta, 39%; Bell-Herron Middle School, 51%; Carrollton elementary school, 47%; Carrollton High School, 36%, and Dellroy, 44%.
“Hopefully, in the next month the participation rate will improve. Preferred Meals have ideas to help improve participation,” Mrs. Weir told the Board.
The cafeteria staff, which serves Carrollton High School students only this school year, has been cut six cooks, according to Mrs. Weir.
The packaged meals are provided to students at Augusta, Dellroy and Carrollton elementary schools, plus Bell-Herron Middle School by Preferred Meals at a cost of $1.55 per lunch to the district. Students pay $2.50 for lunches. However, a credit of between 18 and 20 cents per lunch is expected to be made due to commodity purchases to be made by the supplier, according to School District Treasurer Roxanne Mazur.
The company is based in Illinois and the meals are trucked from a distribution center in Loosic, PA., to a distribution center in Canton where meals are delivered twice weekly to the local school cafeteria and once weekly to the outlying schools.
However, the Board of Education still had to make a $28,000 transfer from the general fund to the lunchroom fund at the Sept. 8 Board meeting. |
