Iola students can look forward to new food options next school year. On Monday night the USD 257 Board of Education finalized a contract with OPPA Food Management.
OPPA specializes in serving nutritional meals to K-12 school districts. The company says it provides fresh products and homemade meals.
“We hope the participation in lunch throughout the district will go up,” Superintendent of Schools Jack Koehn said. “I think people will be pleasantly surprised with how well it will turn out.”
With in-house food service the district had to transfer up to $30,000 from the general funds and $225,000 from local option budget funding to subsidize the program.
Koehn said the district will no longer have to do that. The turn around will be about $300,000 for the district.
Food service personnel no longer will be USD 257 employees with OPPA taking over. This year the district had a food service staff of 28.
“If they want to apply they can,” Koehn said. “OPPA wants people with experience and food service knowledge.”
Other companies that bid for the district were Chartwells, Treat America and Taher.
A committee of board members, staff and administration visited several districts to sample each company’s service.
Committee members scored each company on such things as price and food quality. Koehn said every committee member scored OPPA the highest.
At each lunch, students will have three entree options. For example, they could have chicken alfredo, a meatball sub or lasagna. Or they could hit up the salad bar or wrap and sandwich bar. OPPA is donating salad bars to each USD 257 school. A student lunch will cost $2.80, breakfast $1.88.
USD 257 will be in charge of the summer food program in June. On July 1 OPPA will be take on the district’s food service program.
