With the start of a new school year fast approaching, Cariños de los Niños Charter School administrators were forced to look into alternative plans for providing meals for an estimated 175 students, when a plan to continue food services through the Española School District fell through.
A request by school officials for the District to continue providing meals to the Charter School was denied after District Nutrition Specialist Sennie Quintana said Española could have problems getting reimbursements from the state for additional meals prepared for the Charter School.
“They have indicated they don’t have a desire to work with us right now,” Cariños Chancellor Vernon Jaramillo said. “We are waiting for their desire to increase.”
Cariños was given a provisional three-year charter by the Public Education Commission, but there were concerns about the school lacking kitchen facilities when they move into the former Española administration building for the upcoming school year.
The Charter School’s governing Board approved a preliminary plan, at their June 21 meeting, to work with Rio Arriba County Economic Development Director Christopher Madrid and Roger Gonzales, vice president of Business Development for Siete Del Norte, a local nonprofit, to assist the school in securing food services.
The plan calls for the school to partner with the County and the nonprofit through the development of a Memorandum of Understanding, which would spell out the rental terms of the ¡Sostenga! Kitchen facility at an estimated cost of $18,360, for 180 school days.
According to preliminary figures provided by Cariños officials, under the proposed meal plan, an estimated budget for services calls for 179 school days, based on estimated reimbursements from the New Mexico Public Education Department, at $6.40 per meal for 175 students.
In addition to rental costs for the facility, personnel costs including cooks and a cafeteria assistant to pick up breakfast and lunch and clean up, as well as cooking hardware, transportation expenses and benefits for staff, the estimated cost to the school, reimbursable by the state, is projected at $200,480.
The County would rent the facility to the school at a rate of $17 per hour, for five hours per day, resulting in a cost of $85 per day for use of the commercial kitchen. With utilities and insurance, the cost goes up to $102 per day. Breakfast would be reimbursable at $1.25, lunch at $3.15 and snacks at $1 per student.
“We have a real critical asset in the ¡Sostenga! Kitchen that’s been closed for several years now,” Madrid said. “We’ve opened that up into our Food Hub initiative. One of our major projects in economic development is providing our local foods, giving our local farmers more avenues to market.”
Madrid said the ¡Sostenga! Kitchen is scheduled to open Friday and will be part of a development with space for 30 commercial units at the old Hunter Ford building, the 25,000-square-foot former Ford dealership, located at 505 S. Paseo de Oñate.
Madrid said the County put in about $750,000 and Siete del Norte secured about $1.4 million, in addition to mediating some of the environmental issues involved, for the property’s development.
“When we found out you all have a need for feeding our kids, we thought maybe some other charter schools may have the same need,” he said.
Board President Del Jimenez said he was against the Española School District providing meals to the school, as they have done for the past six or seven years.
“The reason I am against it is that I see so much waste by the children with the food they produce,” he said.
Jimenez said he sees the partnership between the County and the schools as a win-win proposition.
Gonzales, who operated cafeteria services for the Mora School District for five years, said the County was also looking into including La Tierra Montessori School in the plan.
La Tierra Governing Council Chairperson Julie Ann Hill-Clapp said although school staff and members of the governing council attended a meeting regarding the meal plan with County officials, it was an informational, fact-finding effort and the school has not finalized any agreements for providing meals for students next year.
La Tierra students brought their own lunch to school during School Year 2015-16 and the school provided snacks for them.
After initially disputing the proposed facility rental fees at $17 per hour, Jimenez said he was pleased at how the numbers came out. The going rate for operating a commercial kitchen was in line with the price proposed by the County and nonprofit partnership.
“It we could bring it to another 70 to 75 meals, it would reduce our cost,” he said. “At the same time, we would be able to use government money to feed our kids and their (La Tierra) kids.”
He said La Tierra was losing out on state money made available to feed their students by not providing a meal plan. He was pleased there was a plan in the works to feed nutritious, healthy meals to the Cariños student population.
Gonzales said he would return to the Cariños Governing Board with more concrete figures and would work on drafting a Memorandum of Understanding, spelling out the terms of an agreement to be presented at the Board’s special meeting, July 19.