Charles City High School kitchen staff retraining after state inspection finds food safety violations

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Food service staff at Charles City High School said they are addressing issues found by state inspectors during a health and safety visit earlier this month.

On Oct. 11, a routine visit by an inspector from the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing flagged the high school kitchen for six violations of the state food code, marking a rough start for Southwest Foodservice Excellence (SFE), which took over food service duties for the district this year.

Chief among the complaints was that the person-in-charge of the kitchen at the time of the inspection was not a certified food production manager. In a case of unfortunate timing, on-site director Johnny Worley had a personal emergency and was not present the day of the inspection. According to the inspector’s report, the designated person-in-charge did not demonstrate food safety principles, resulting in several observed risk factor violations.

Worley has since been removed and SFE is in the process of finding a new full-time site manager for the kitchen.

“We’re bringing in a new manager to address some of these other issues,” said SFE Regional Director Mike Butler.

Butler took over as site-manager for the kitchen the day after the inspection and has been working to correct the issues flagged by the state inspector.

Among them, the state inspector found that one of the kitchen’s food warmers was not working, creating risk-factor violations by not keeping food at the appropriate temperature.

“We had a food warmer at the high school, brand new, and for whatever reason one of the wells went out,” said Butler. “It’s been fixed since last Thursday.”

In addition, the inspector found that food prepped for the next day had been left out at room temperature instead of going into the cooler and a bucket of sanitizer solution was untreated tap water.

“Whoever set up the sanitary bucket didn’t put the chemical in it,” said Butler.

Butler says that he immediately began re-training the kitchen staff to ensure that tasks are properly completed once started and has made sure that all of the kitchen equipment is operational.

A follow-up report on Oct. 25 concluded that the identified violations had been sufficiently addressed. Two additional employees will receive certified food production manager training, and proof of food cooling and heating procedures, along with clean-up procedures, were provided.

A temporary site-manager is expected to arrive on Tuesday to take over until SFE can find a new full-time person.

Based out of Arizona, Charles City is SFE’s first excursion into the Iowa market. The company made a competitive bid to serve as Charles City’s food service provider as it seeks to expand into the Midwest.

“We’ve had a very good relationship with the folks here in Charles City,” said Butler. “Unfortunately we’ve had some internal challenges, but that’s okay. We’ll work through that.”

Superintendent Dr. Anne Lundquist said that the situation was unfortunate, but she has been satisfied with SFE’s response and is glad that these problems were brought to light.

“It is good the issues were identified and addressed quickly,” said Lundquist. “No adverse consequences resulted thanks to SFE’s speedy response.”