School Board approves steps to cut cafeteria losses and save on energy costs
By James P. Gannon
The Rappahannock County School Board took steps Tuesday evening to cut the financial losses suffered by school food services by raising some prices, reorganizing the high school cafeteria and increasing student participation in government-subsidized meal plans.
The board voted unanimously to accept a series of recommendations by Superintendent Robert Chappell designed to make the schools’ food services more appealing to students and to reduce the operation’s large deficits, which reached $78,395 in the past school year.
The board also approved a new program to reduce energy use by the schools and took under consideration a proposed list of capital improvements totaling $1.4 million that is aimed primarily at renovations that would cut use of electricity and fuel oil used to heat and cool the county’s elementary and high school buildings.
The overhaul of the food services operations follows up on Chappell’s remarks to the Board of Supervisors on Monday that he intends to cut the cafeteria losses. “We’ve seen too much of an increase in the deficit,” the superintendent told the supervisors. “We want to get that deficit down, hopefully to a break-even point.” Some cost-cutting steps have already been taken, including eliminating one full-time and two part-time job slots in food services.
The School Board, accepting Chappell’s recommendations, voted to raise some prices in the school cafeterias but not to increase the basic prices of student breakfasts and lunches. Prices will be raised for a la carte items–such as a piece of pizza or French fries–and for adult lunches served to teachers and staff.
The approved plan will hold basic student prices at $1 for breakfast and $1.50 for lunch in the elementary school, and $1.50 for breakfast and and $2 for lunch in the high school. Prices for a la carte items will be raised by 25 cents each–partly to encourage students to buy full meals instead of grazing on pizza and snacks.
Prices for lunches served to adults will increase to $2.75 from the previous $2.50. Chappell held out the possibility that student prices for breakfast and lunch meals may be raised during the school year if the steps being taken now fail to produce better financial results. “At least for the first few months of the school year,” prices to students will not increase, he said.
The high school cafeteria, renamed “Panther Cafe,” will be physically re-arranged to cut down on student time waiting in line and to offer more “grab-and-go” selections. “We’ll try to make it a more attractive area much like you might see in a food court,” Chappell told the board.
The schools also plan to step up efforts to enroll more students in the federally-subsidized program for free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts, which would increase revenue from government subsidies. In August, the schools will mail applications to all public-school families in Rappahannock for enrollment in the subsidized meals program, in an effort to get more students enrolled and thus increase Federal reimbursements for student meals.
Under the government program, students from low-income households are eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school. In the past, some parents seemed reluctant to sign up a child for this program, apparently fearing some stigma attached to low-income status. But Chappell said that the program has changed to make participation entirely confidential, so it can’t be known which children are receiving subsidized meals and which are not.
Rappahannock schools received $93,156 in federal reimbursements for meals last school year, and that revenue could increase substantially if more students enrolled in the program, thus helping solve the deficit problem. For every free lunch served, the government pays $2.47; for every free breakfast, $1.35.
On energy savings, the board approved a series of measures recommended by school adminstrators designed to counter some of the effects of soaring prices for fuel and electicity.
Among the new steps planned are:
- A ban on the use of space heaters in the school, except in emergencies;
- Setting thermostats at 70 degrees during heating season and 76 degrees for air-conditioning;
- Seeking voluntary reduction in field trips to one per grade level per year, and one per high school academic subject;
- Limiting warm-up for buses to a maximum of four minutes in winter, and eliminating idling of buses during loading of students;
- Eliminating some fluorescent tubes in fixtures, as appropriate.
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