School district’s emergency purchasing waiver extended
The School District of Lee County received an extension for the Emergency Purchasing Waiver to July 2023, which will allow it to continue with the current business model used to feed the students in the district.
Director of Food and Nutrition Services Kandace Messenger said from January through July 2022 the district worked closely with vendors and put into place a working plan that allowed the district to provide 7.8 million meals in the second semester and more than 200,000 meals this past summer.
An emergency food purchase supply waiver was put into place in Oct. 2021 due to the supply issues that resulted from the COVID pandemic. Messenger said the manufacturers no longer had raw material to meet demand in both private and public industries, compounded with a prior main grocer vendor discontinuing servicing K-12 business, which changed the business model to get groceries into the school.
“Food and Nutrition asked for an increase of $9 million to cover the anticipated cost of the storage and transportation of grocers into the schools,” she said. “December 2021 with help with procurement services we were able to get a contract with Florida Freezer to store food and OC Trucking to deliver groceries to the kitchen to feed our students.”
Food and Nutrition Service ended up spending $4.3 million, which was less than the expected $9 million estimated. It was broken down by the $2.8 million increase of cost of food and $1.5 million to the cost of storage and distribution.
The expenditures from January through June 2022, which included spending less with Sysco at $7.3 million, $515,512 for Florida Freezer, $950,097 for OC Trucking and $2.8 million for Direct Deliveries. The district is expecting small increases from Florida Freezer and OC Trucking moving forward.
At this time Sysco has not given the district a timeline to start the school-to-school delivery model.
She said Direct Deliveries delivers such items as crackers, cereals and breakfast items, which are the grain components needed to make the student meal.
“Direct Deliveries continue to happen when we are notified that our main grocer is not able to get items for us, which forces us to reach out to manufacturers to see what they have. Most of the time the deliveries from manufacturers can happen within a couple of weeks. The main grocer needs 60 days to get the product into their facility and then it is another two weeks to get the item into the schools for our students,” Messenger said.
Manufactures have also streamlined their product line, offering fewer choices to offset the rise in food cost.
“To supplement the food cost, Food and Nutrition Services utilized the Department of Defense produce and take advantage of USDA commodity processing and some brown box items,” she said.
The total USDA entitlement dollars allocated for this year is just over $4.1 million.
The process begins by placing a large grocery order for Sysco to be delivered. Messenger said right now they are looking into the first week of December for those groceries to be in the schools.
“Then it comes into Florida Freezer. They store it for us. We issue them individual orders, we send them a pick ticket. They pick it and get it ready with OC Trucking and label it for every school,” she said. “They set up routes we have approved. They pick it up in the morning and deliver it to schools.”
In terms of putting something new on the menu, Messenger said they have to put a forecast in, resulting in it coming in 60 days later. This, she said, is why repetition is happening on the school menus.
To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com