SUMNER – Members of SAD 39’s food services staff spoke at Wednesday’s school board meeting in an attempt to save two assistant cook positions in the district’s kitchens.
Superintendent of Schools Richard Colpitts recommended that the board eliminate a two-hour-per-day position at Buckfield Junior/Senior High School and a three-hour-per-day position at Hartford/Sumner Elementary School because of budget concerns.
In March 2002, half of the district’s students ate meals prepared in the schools’ kitchens. By March 2005, only a third bought food at school. Only the breakfast program is meeting its revenue expectation. The lunch program generates 60 percent of expected revenues and the a la carte program brings in less than 50 percent of its budgeted earnings.
“At the same time,” Colpitts said, “we’re seeing our state federal revenues decline. If the board has a belief in the philosophy that this must be fully self-funded, then the board and I are going to have to have a conversation with the director of food management and see how we are going to do that.”
“To maintain these positions next year will add to a $20,000 projected deficit that we already believe will happen next year,” Colpitts said. Cutting the positions would alleviate that deficit by $7,000 to $8,000.
Colpitts expressed “grave concern” about his recommendation to cut the two positions. Although the position at the elementary school would be cut after a staff member’s retirement, cutting the high school position would involve “laying off a real person. And it sends a message to these people that we don’t value their work.”
Rossie Kyllonen, a food services staff member at the high school, told the board that cutting one of the three food-services positions at the school would seriously hurt the staff’s abilities.
“Since we’ve gotten this news we’ve tried to really be mindful of what we’re doing on a daily basis, and say OK, we’re not going to have this third person so what are we going to have to do to make this work?’ and as near as we can tell, it’s just not going to be good,” Kyllonen said. “It takes more than two people to run the kitchen.”
Another member of the high school kitchen staff, Jane Averill, worried that the school would be forced to reduce its a la carte offerings if the position were cut. “We’ve worked hard to build this program and we offer kids a good variety of food. I just hate to see it go downhill,” she said.
Other members of the food services staff joined Kyllonen and Averill in asking that the board postpone its decision while it tries to develop a plan to save the position. After extensive discussion, the board unanimously voted to keep the positions. Food services staff plan to attend next Wednesday’s budget committee meeting to ask for funding for the two positions.
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