POLAND – One year after the town approved a $60,000 bail-out of the school lunch program, leaders say they’ve turned it around.

They expect to begin school next fall with $10,000 to spare.

Bills once left untouched for months have been paid. Eunice Bartlett, the school’s food service director, who cried last year amid a barrage of town meeting criticism was given a standing ovation when the locals gathered again this year.

“It’s been a grand turn-around,” said Ike Levine, chairman of the Poland School Committee.

The program began its slide more than 18 months ago, when staffers to School Union 29 first told town leaders that they had run out of money.

It was a program that had become sloppy, they said.

“It was under the radar,” Levine said.

In part, that was because the program is actually an arm of the town, not the school. Communication soured.

After the 2002 town meeting, leaders from the town and the school vowed to change things. Peter Bolduc, a businessman and member of the school committee met with Bartlett and others from the program. Last summer, they designed some changes.

They brought new limits to the lunch menu, raised the prices of hot lunches at the high school, began cutting hours within the kitchen staff, earned grants and renegotiated the contract for bread to the town’s two school cafeterias.

After the school union hired Frank D’Agostino, a former teacher and businessman to oversee its support services, more changes occurred. He stopped by the town office every morning to boost communication. Meanwhile, he cut the number of food suppliers to the program from about 25 to five, all of whom were asked to bid for the opportunity.

“What we tried to do is make (the program) totally self-sufficient,” D’Agostino said. That could be a year away, he said.

And D’Agostino thanked Bartlett and her staff, who led the cost cutting. He worked hard to make sure those people knew that they could make tangible changes to the way things were done.

“Once they believed, they did most of the work,” he said. “They deserve most of the credit.”



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