From Al’s Morning Meeting:
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that many school cafeterias nationwide are not inspected twice a year as required by federal statute. When they are inspected, a big percentage of them fail.
For example, “… two-thirds of schools in New York state are not receiving the twice-yearly health inspections …” The story said in one New York county 80 percent of the schools had not been inspected twice in a year and one in four were not inspected at all.
Two annual inspections were mandated by Congress in 2004 for all schools — public and private, as well as nontraditional education settings such as jails and health care facilities — that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which provides low-cost meals to needy students.
“One of the most common reasons we hear is that it’s not schools not trying to comply, but that staffing of public health inspectors is so short it’s difficult to even get inspections scheduled,” said Jean Daniel, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program and the law. “It’s not that schools are sitting there saying, ‘I’m not going to do it.’ “
Only 12 states, including Florida and Virginia, reported 90 percent or more of their schools in compliance, according to Agriculture Department data. An equal number of states, including California and Colorado, had less than half their schools inspected twice.
Six states had lower rates of compliance than New York. Maine had the worst, with just 3 percent of its 666 schools getting two inspections annually.
