VOORHEESVILLE — While students and staff are excited about healthy, tastier, and more diverse school foods, the school lunch program is running at a deficit.
After a recent external audit for 2004-05 performed by Washburn, Ellington, Sheeler, Taisz & Pinsley, Neil Lamere wrote in his, management letter, " [The] school lunch program ran at a significant loss of $23,948.’

Assistant Superintendent for Business Sarita Winchell said one of the most costly items in the lunch budget is health-insurance benefits for cafeteria workers. It costs $9,000 for health insurance for the kitchen staff, which can’t be moved and combined with other health-insurance costs, and must remain in this separate fund, Winchell said.

Also, since the cafeteria staff had a number of unfortunate illnesses last spring and increased absences, this contributed to higher personnel costs, Winchell said.

The district hired a new head chef, Tim Mulligan, in February after a long-time food manager retired. Since February, there has been a complete overhaul of Voorheesville’s lunch program.

Kelly McKenna, the high school student-government president, said that many more students are buying lunch now than before because of the higher quality of food, which taste sgood.

It is a priority to offer the most nutritious food possible, Winchell said. Currently the price charged to students of the type A lunch is one of the highest in the area, Winchell said.

The type A lunch, which comes with milk and fruit, cost $2.

Mulligan said that he does not offer canned fruits because of the sugary syrup; instead he provides only fresh fruits, which vary in price depending on the season.

Lamere said the debate on lunches is not a unique problem for Voorheesville. Districts are trying to decide what quality of lunch they want to provide and at what cost, he said. The district has to decide if the benefit is worth the additional expense.
Winchell said that the cafeteria now offers many broader lunch options then it did before Mulligan took over. There are now a lot more choices for type A lunch. Besides the main hot meal, there are also two types of homemade soups offered every day and "grab and go" containers of salads and sandwiches.
"Satisfaction has grown considerably," Winchell said.

Lunch-line tour

On Monday night, Winchell offered the school board her report on how to reduce the lunch budget deficit, but maintain the quality which it was hoping to achieve with the hiring of Mulligan.

Before going over her proposal, she and Mulligan led the board members through a tour of the high-school cafeteria lunch line. Together they showed off the new variety of foods.

There were Chicken Caesar salads, salads with cheese, cubed melon cups, and small sub roles with lunch meats.

Winchell’s deficit reduction plan has two main objects: gain even more participants, and lower the overall food cost by using more surplus government foods.

Right now, the district is offering pizza through Pizza Hut, but Mulligan is experimenting with making his own pizza with government mozzarella, Winchell said.

Also Winchell suggested the district run a marketing campaign to have the staff buy lunch. Also, she wants to send more information home to parents about the variety and options, so that parents are more comfortable with sending their students to school with lunch money.

Voorheesville Teacher Association President Kathy Fiero has praised Mulligan’s homemade soups at board meetings in the past, saying that they are very popular among the elementary-school teachers.

Food by the numbers

The food department now has a new computer program. When Mulligan enters the week’s menu into the computer, it does an analysis of the collective meals’ nutritional value to determine if the overall diet has too many calories or fats.

Mulligan said that students are upset because they can no longer get hash-brown potatoes with sausage patties anymore on French Toast Day — it’s to much fat in one meal, he said.

Winchell added that while Mulligan has gained students’ input in an informal way, the students opinions should be solicited in a more formal manner to increase the number of participants in meal purchasing.

In order to make the dollars work, the school food has to be tasty, Winchell said.

Fiero said that she has seen elementary students have an increased interest in the new hot meals created by Mulligan, but she has a fourth-grade daughter who doesn’t really understand the variety of food options, and that she can buy sandwiches instead of the hot meal with her meal ticket and get milk and fruit.

While he is at the high school explaining the menu to students there, Mulligan said, he doesn’t get down to the elementary school very often to give the younger students more one-on-one time to explain the options as they go through the line.

Board member David Gibson said that he can see that the new program is successful under Mulligan’s direction because last September 6,000 meals were purchased and this September 8,000 meals were purchased at the elementary school.

Winchell said that, on average, for the month of October, 500 type A meals where purchased per day at the high school.

Board member Tom McKenna expressed concern when he saw that part of the cost-reduction proposal includes reducing the number of times pizza is served, which he knows to be a student favorite.

Mulligan said that he is reducing the number of times pizza is offered, but replacing it with the just as popular favorite, but much cheaper — grilled cheese sandwiches.

Kelly McKenna, the student president, said that Grilled Cheese Days are by far the most popular.

Mulligan said he served 800 grilled-cheese sandwiches last time they were on the menu. These sandwiches, are served every other Thursday, Mulligan said.

High school Principal Mark Diefendorf said he knows that lunches are more popular than ever because more students are coming in to borrow money from the main office to purchase lunches; students are allowed to borrow money twice before they have to pay up on their tab, he said.

Even kids who have brought lunch to school change their minds once they see the option, Diefendorf said.
"We don’t want the program to run at a deficit" board president Joseph Pofit told The Enterprise on Wednesday. "The school lunch program should carry itself."

He said that the changes have been very successful, but the district needs to do a better job at balancing the price of meals, nutrients, and federal money to pay for food, and a plan to do that is what the administrative team has brought back to the board.

Board member Paige Macdonald said that, two or three years ago, a site-based management team had said that the district needed to give more options.

The idea is that by offering more meal options, kids eat healthier foods rather than buying snack foods for lunch.

Mulligan has transformed the program, board members agreed. Those in the board room applauded his work.