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When the food program in the Newton Public Schools finished last school year with a $1.4 million deficit, they covered their debt by taking money from the city’s general fund. The money could have paid the salaries of 26 teachers, Food Service Director Rob Clickstein said.
According to Clickstein, this end-of the-year deficit is nothing new. "The food program has failed to break even on its own for the longest time,” Clickstein said.
The food program is supposed to be self-supporting and is required by law to break even at the end of the school year even if it means dipping into Newton’s general fund. The fund is made up of money from the federal government, the state and the city.
The deficit increases every year as the price of the food purchased for the cafeteria increases and as a result, the food program takes more from city funds every year. “Most recently over the past three or four years [the cost of the food] has risen so much that it’s actually becoming a noticeable thing to most of the teachers and the administrators and the community,” Clickstein said.
Last spring, the deficit became so noticeable to the community that the Citizens’ Advisory Group (C.A.G.) suggested outsourcing the cafeteria as one of the ways Newton could save money. Former Mayor Cohen, past President of the school committee Dori Zaleznik and Former President of the Board of Alderman Lisle Baker created the C.A.G. to address financial pressures facing the city. The group served from the spring of 2008 to 2009 according to Vice Chair Ruthanne Fuller.
Fuller explained that the loss of money in the food program contributed to the C.A.G.’s suggestion to outsource. “The Newton Public School system is facing a really unusual situation in its food services’ delivery and cost … N.P.S. provided 688,695 meals but it lost $1.2 million in the process of doing it,” Fuller said. “The losses have been increasing over the years, the sales of paid lunches have been decreasing and our prices are among the highest when you look at other public schools in the region.”
Fuller said outsourcing the cafeteria could be a better alternative. “One [reason for outsourcing is] that when you hire an expert, or a company that specializes in providing meals to large groups of people day after day, they often know better how to do it so that the food both tastes better but also can be delivered in a more cost-effective manner,” Fuller said. “This is their business, they understand it, and this is not what the Newton Public Schools do. We’re in business to educate our kids. [Food] is not an area of expertise.”
Fuller added that the concept of economies of scale is another benefit of outsourcing. “A company that is buying a lot of food, not just for the Newton Public Schools but also for other schools, or hospitals or colleges, can buy food in much larger quantities, and it often therefore costs less, so they can take advantage of economies of scale that the Newton Public Schools alone cannot,” Fuller said.
Fuller’s work on the C.A.G. led to the creation of a school subcommittee that looked into finding a more cost-effective way of running the food program.
“[Fuller] kind of did the first round understanding that [the food program] was losing money so she made the recommendation that we should consider outsourcing,” subcommittee chair Reenie Murphy said. “My subcommittee took it to the next level and actually went and visited other school districts and talked to their school business managers.”
The subcommittee compared the food programs of Lexington and Brookline to that of Newton’s. The committee not only gathered information on the food programs of the two towns but also visited their cafeterias.
“Lexington has kitchens and cafeterias in all of their schools and we don’t. It’s a problem,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that it costs us more money. We have to satellite the foods into all the other elementary schools. We have to prepare it in one place and then have somebody deliver it to the other schools. That costs money.”
Lexington also outsources their food service, so the committee chose to look into Lexington in order to see if outsourcing is an effective alternative. Through talking to workers of the company that runs Lexington’s food services, the subcommittee was able to gain information from workers in Lexington. “Their food service management was there so they answered a lot of our questions,” she said. Their district business manager was also there so she also answered some of our questions about how [Lexington delivers] their food service. We compared that to how we deliver ours.”
Murphy noted some benefits of Lexington’s outsourced food program. “In Lexington, both the operations and the employees come under the food service company, so they have the advantage of having a nutritionist on staff, their own payroll and their own human resources,” she said. “They can take advantage of a different purchasing system also have access to a more direct food service options.”
While Lexington’s food program is outsourced, Murphy said that Brookline’s food program is relatively similar to Newton’s. “The big difference between us and Brookline is the benefits for the employees,” Murphy said. “Brookline runs its own service, kind of like we do, but in Brookline, the benefits for all of the food service employees rest on the town funds, so the school doesn’t have to account for the cost of the benefits. In Newton, the employee benefits are accounted for on the school’s side. Brookline’s losses would be greater if their benefits showed up on the school’s side.”
The subcommittee ultimately concluded that Lexington’s program and Brookline’s program have more benefits and are more cost-effective than Newton’s program.
According to Murphy, the school department is now taking the investigations a step further. “They’re crunching all the numbers to see which way to go,” Murphy said.
