Cafeteria improvements long overdue

Hawaii’s public school cafeterias have scored poorly in reviews from internal audits in the past, and the most recent look shows little, if any, improvement. Enough studies, already. The Department of Education must act against what the most recent audit calls the "unacceptable" lack of oversight, monitoring and accountability and correct what’s needed to operate at a modern and efficient level.

The scathing report was handed to the Board of Education’s Audit Committee last week, finding that the schools’ food services section "is operating with conflicting, outdated and non-comprehensive policies and procedures." The system is partly plagued with "great inefficiencies" caused by an overlap of the food services and fiscal services branches in food purchasing and meal payment collection from students. The duplication is both confusing and expensive — and opens the door to impropriety or fraud.

The audit found that the department’s food services branch is using a staffing formula accepted for use in 1964 — nearly a half-century ago — causing inflated staffing statewide with unneeded 27 full-time government employees and 35 part-timers. Also, the formula was based on staffing in September, by far the busiest month: 3,950 adult meals a day compared with a 2,220 average for all other months.

Those add up in megadollars, and Don Horner, the school board chairman, is right in saying an outside consultant might need to step in to help the department, "given the magnitude and the size of the problem." The school food services program costs $92 million a year: $33 million from state funds, $27 million from student and adult cash sales and the rest federal.

That is indeed big money — and it’s frightening to realize the truth in a BOE member’s statement that given the woefully lax system, employee honesty "is the only thing that stands between what we’ve got and massive corruption."

The Hawaii food services branch involves 256 schools feeding 100,000 students as well as school staff daily, among the top 10 in the country, the audit points out. The school system serves breakfast to 20 percent of the students and lunch to 60 percent, factoring in nearly half of all students who qualify for free or reduced price meals.

"We’re running a $92 million business on 3-by-5 cards," Horner said.

The school system should be first in line to plunge into the modern information technology in the process of being outfitted throughout Hawaii’s state government.

The audit recommends that the school system decide which section is in charge of food services policies and procedures, and require training for all staff handling food collection and purchasing functions. It also suggests that the department assign a task force "specifically to assist schools and offices" with the function.

Importantly, it urges that the department "beef up money collection protocols to ensure funds are well tracked and accounted for." That should have been assured long ago and now ought to be basic, considering the capability of today’s technology. That would be but a start in long-overdue improvements to a system that is vital to the feeding of our public school students, but one that needs to better manage our taxpayer funds.