Pleasant Valley School District is keeping its food service program in house, and keeping its director, too.

In a 4-4 vote, the motion to approve Whitsons Nutrition LLC was struck down at a special meeting Monday night.

School board director Todd Kresge said, “I don’t want my name affiliated with it if it does go through.”

Kresge was one of the directors who voted no. The others included Teresa Greggo, Michael Galler and Delbert Zacharias.

The directors who voted yes were Sue Kresge, Norm Burger, Robert Clark and Diane Serfass. Melanie Zipp was absent.

Todd Kresge said, “I do not believe that outsourcing a department that we have that brings money back into this district is a wise idea when (for) every other department, their general fund basically covers all other expenses. This department here brings in money to self-sustain most of their costs.”

The Food Service Department had a $500,000 profit this year because of the district’s ability to qualify for the federal government’s Community Eligibility Provision program. The program provides free breakfast and lunches to students in low-income areas.

This was the first year the school district participated in the CEP program and will continue to receive funding through the program for the next four years. It is also the first year, in several years, that the school district has made a profit.

Michael Simonetta, the business manager for the school district, said the Food Service Department has a $1.4 million deficit. The district has used $40,000 each year from the general fund to cover the expenses.

Simonetta said the deficit has been caused by a combination of factors that include the cost of salaries, benefits, retirement contributions to the Public School Employees’ Retirement System, and rising food costs.

Although the school district would continue to have the same employee related costs with an outside food service management company, Simonetta said the FSMC could generate a profit for the school district, because the FSMC can negotiate lower costs for food because it buys in large quantities.

Whitsons’ proposal said it could guarantee a $25,635 profit each year. This number was generated by subtracting Whitsons’ costs, which they projected to be $819,733, from the $1,560,252 revenue the Food Services Department brings in, and subtracting out the school district’s employee-related costs of $714,884.

Todd Kresge said in an interview after the meeting that a large contributing factor to the deficit is how employee hours are budgeted. He said that a food service employee who also does custodial work for the school district, for example, gets paid for both jobs out of the Food Services Department budget. If that person puts in extra hours as a custodian, then the overtime pay also gets taken from the Food Services Department budget. Before the district changed to this budgeting format, the Food Service Department didn’t have these financial problems.

During the meeting, Greggo said she was voting no because the school district outsourced food services in the past and it didn’t work.

She asked Simonetta if Beverly Hendricks, the director of the Food Services Department, was asked to give input into the Request for Proposals from outside food service management companies. He said no.

“We have a director with experience, and you’re telling me we want better meals. OK, I’ve been in the cafeterias. I’ve eaten the meals. I think they’re fine. Can we make them better? We can make everything better, so why don’t we bring someone that’s trained in to help Beverly and the head cooks. Bring them to the table and talk about what we can do with what we have to make it better,” Greggo said.

Whitsons’ proposal suggested hiring both a director of the program and a culinary director. One of its selling points was that it prepares meals from scratch, buys all of its ingredients from local sources, and provides fresh fruits and vegetables.

Zacharias said that has a long haul truck driver, he would pick up produce in California and deliver it back East.

“They all went to the same place where these companies get it from,” he said refuting the idea that the produce is locally sourced.

In the audience, the head chef of the cafeteria at Pleasant Valley Elementary School weighed in on the issues.

“I take a lot of pride in what I put out every day,” she said. “You talk fresh. I got watermelons, strawberries, apples, oranges, grapes, salads. I have veggie boxes. What more fresh do you want me to put out without manpower? It’s a Catch-22.”

The head cook said she would be interested in having Beverly Hendricks teach her and the cafeteria staff some new cooking methods, because Hendricks is a trained sous chef.

She said she would be willing to go to cooking lessons with Hendricks on days the children aren’t in school for lunch, and they don’t usually work, just in order to have a chance to make the program better.

Superintendent James Konrad said he loves the idea, but would have to work something out with the union before doing it. To which union President Tammy Vanhouwe, of the Pleasant Valley Education Support Professionals Association, quickly responded, “Give me a call on that one. We’ll figure it out.”