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Hillsborough County Schools Put Meal Budget On A Diet

Tribune photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

The district will save money by serving Big Daddy Pizzas only once a week.

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By MARILYN BROWN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 5, 2009

TAMPA - Serving smaller hot dogs, plastic juice pouches and fewer of the kids' favorite chicken sandwiches can go a long way in shrinking the food budget.

Hillsborough County is using those tactics and others to shave $1.3 million from its $87 million annual meal budget.

The district raised lunch prices this year by 50 cents to offset rising food prices, but a greater percentage of families are qualifying for free meals. By December, about 53.2 percent of applicants qualified for free or reduced price meals compared with to 50 percent last year. That's about 5,600 more students than last year.

Those percentages mirror a national trend that shows more families are looking to schools for help with children's meals. Hillsborough's free breakfast program for all students — regardless of family income — also is growing as the school district's population rises.

"It's great we have a resource to offer parents to help make other ends meet," said Mary Kate Harrison, the district's general manger of student nutrition services. Families qualify for free lunches if their annual income is at or below 130 percent of the poverty level, or $27,560 for a family of four.

"It's growing," Harrison said. "We get applications in every day."

When the majority of 190,000 students eat school meals, means that reducing the size of quarter-pound hot dogs by two-thirds of an ounce saves $8,000 a year. Swapping cartons of juice for plastic pouches for older students saves $65,000 — and generates less waste.

The district's $87 million student nutrition budget covers more than food, however. It includes salaries and benefits for more than 2,000 employees, kitchen equipment, maintenance and utilities.

The operation is so big that setting food service printers on "toner saver" is saving nearly $15,
000 a year, Harrison said.

The biggest single-ticket savings was trimming $275,000 by awarding a new bid for chemicals used to clean kitchen equipment, pots and pans.

Serving a popular breaded chicken sandwich less often is saving almost as much.

The bad economy means good news on the food front, however. Some companies are reducing their bid prices, Harrison said, to keep the district's business.

TRIMMING THE BUDGETARY FAT

The Hillsborough County School District is taking steps to save money in the food services budget. Here are some of the changes and the savings reaped:

$65,000: Plastic juice pouches (replacing cartons in middle and high schools)

$8,000: Smaller hot dogs (quarter-pounder reduced by two-thirds of an ounce)

$108,000: Biscuit brand (new brand of trans fat biscuit saves 2 cents per biscuit)

$14,000: Plain paper (napkins and cutlery wrappers without logos)

$410,000: Fewer favorites (Chicken Supreme sandwiches and Big Daddy Pizza are served once, not twice a week)

$200,000: Canned goods (instead of fresh fruit is replaced by canned three of five days a week)

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

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