Apr 16, 2013 3 min read

BURGETTSTOWN – Burgettstown Area School Board voted Monday to reduce the hours of cafeteria workers in order to rectify a $78,000 deficit in the district’s preliminary food service budget.

Superintendent Deborah Jackson said school administrators worked with officials from Nutrion Inc., the company that handles the district’s food preparation, to come up with new weekly totals for hourly workers for the 2013-14 academic year.

“When I met with (food services director and district Nutrition Inc. employee) Robert Mamula, they proposed a budget for the upcoming year,” Jackson said. “So we asked him to take that back and for them to help us reduce that deficit. They came back with a four-pronged plan to help us do that.”

In addition to the reduced schedules, board members also voted to increase the cost of lunches in the district by 10 cents. Both motions passed by a 9-0 vote.

Collectively, the 15 hourly cafeteria staffers will see their schedules reduced from present 400 hours per week to 364.5 hours for the 2013-14 academic year. Some workers will be affected more than others, with some staffers maintaining their hourly totals and others falling by more than half. The average work week of the employees will be reduced from 26.7 hours to 24.4. Seven “general cafeteria worker” positions, a cafeteria cashier, an elementary cook, a head cook and assistant cook, all with varying work weeks, will be affected.

The deficit reduction plan also included a labor cost reduction on the part of Nutrition Inc., and the company dropped a planned raise in the management fee they charged the district.

Jackson said there were many factors that led to the deficit, including new federal nutritional guidelines that have been recently implemented.

“Some things students may enjoy eating we can’t offer every day, like pizza or French fries,” Jackson said. “That contributes to the deficit because we’re serving less. You try through education to teach the kids it’s important to eat more fruits and vegetables and this and that, but it’s a consumer market and kids just aren’t buying.”

The food services budget for 2012-13 was $563,000.

Also during Monday’s meeting, board members voted to approve a number of motions related to improvements to school buildings and grounds, totaling $34,919. The most expensive of these improvements was the installation of heat tape on the roof of the high school in the music and locker room areas at a cost of $8,459. Repairs to the asphalt at the basketball court at the elementary center and outside of Hill Memorial Stadium, the backstop at the baseball field and to the track at the stadium were among other improvements to be made. An exterior door will be replaced in the elementary cafeteria and new art display panels and a WeatherBug display monitor will be installed.

Megan Zitner was approved as the new girls’ basketball head coach. Zitner has been a health and physical education teacher in the district for the past six years and played basketball and track in high school in Sandusky, Ohio, and at Edinboro University.

Alexander Hinsey was named the new girls’ volleyball coach. The current University of Pittsburgh graduate student played at Exeter High School near Reading and is a player/coach of the Pitt club volleyball team.