The company that provides food services to the Española School District submitted its proposed budget for the upcoming academic year at the Española School Board’s work session May 13.
Summit Food Services Management submitted three plans to the Board for the cost of serving food to the students of the District. However, each of the possibilities forecasted a deficit that the District will have to pay.
The first plan outlined Summit making no changes and continuing food service to certain schools within the District. If no changes were made, approximately 500,000 meals would be served, at a cost of almost $90,000.
In the second plan, Summit would serve food to students in the entire District, which means more than 800,000 meals would be served for the year, at a cost of a little more than $126,000.
In the final plan, Summit would service only the secondary sites — the middle school and the high school. In this projection, more than 200,000 meals would be served and would cost the District more than $70,000.
Looking at the cost numbers, Superintendent Danny Trujillo mentioned that Española is not very different from the other districts in the state.
“Food service is an expensive part of the budget,” Trujillo said.
The District is looking at ways to generate additional revenue and can increase revenue by increasing the number of students, staff and faculty who purchase lunch on campus or by increasing the reimbursement that it receives from the federal government.
However, the high school is a particular challenge when it comes to increasing sales revenue.
“At the high school, they can either get someone to go to Blake’s or they just don’t eat,” Trujillo said.
High school administrators have tried to increase the number of available lunch lines, hoping that shorter wait times would entice students to purchase food at the school rather than go elsewhere, but it may have reached its limit.
“I agree that the students need to have more time at the high school, but during a one lunch wave period, there is no way that the students can have more time,” Sennie Quintana, the director of food and transportation services said.
Adding more lunch lines also has its issues.
“We also have to think though, that for every line we open, we do have to hire a new cashier and more staff,” Quintana said.
Federal reimbursements are another way to increase revenue, but the federal government asks for income information to determine if a particular student qualifies for a free or reduced lunch — and parents have been less than willing to provide that information.
“We can’t force the parents to fill out the application because that would be a violation,” Quintana said. “We had applications where the parents put ‘none of your business’ and we have to accept that application.”
The other avenue for balancing the budget is by cutting costs.
Ralph Medina, vice president of the Española School Board, made the following point during the meeting:
“What I gather — I might be right or I might be wrong — is that we basically, by having Summit and then having our district employees, we have two administrations.”
Currently, the District pays labor costs for both Summit and its own District employees to serve food to the students and Medina’s point is that savings could be realized by eliminating one of those labor costs.
Summit, an A’viands, LLC subsidiary, is a food services management company that provides food services for correctional facilities and K-12 schools in the Southwestern United States.
In the end, the Board decided to table the issue of renewing Summit’s contract for the following academic year so that additional studies could be done to determine if contracting out the food services program is worth it. A survey to send to students asking about the food services that Summit provides is planned for later this year.