Audit Report On the Department of Education’s Compliance With Health and Safety Requirements for School Cafeterias (Manhattan)

Introduction

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) provides primary and secondary education to over one million pre-kindergarten to grade 12 students. In connection with its educational mission, DOE provides meals free of charge throughout its 2,707 public school cafeterias, located within more than 1,800 public schools. DOE’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) serves breakfast and lunch to New York City (City) public school children and provided approximately 850,000 meals per day for School Year 2018-2019.

OFNS developed and implemented a Food Safety Program as of September 2014 using Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) principles to identify areas where OFNS staff and procedures have a direct impact on food safety. The goal of implementing HACCP is to manage potential health and safety problems through risk assessment during food production with a focus on prevention rather than end-product testing.

As part of DOE’s Food Safety Program, all schools, regardless of their designation, undergo periodic reviews of their food safety practices and procedures, and the conditions in their kitchens and cafeterias. DOE’s OFNS conducts unannounced periodic inspections at all schools during each school year. DOE’s inspectors, who work under the jurisdiction of the Food School Safety Program, include 10 HACCP Advisors and 10 Quality Assurance Specialists (QASs) who visit school kitchens and cafeterias throughout the City to ensure that the staff are adhering to the required policies and procedures and utilizing DOE’s Food Safety Checklist and New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s (DOHMH’s) self-inspection worksheet for food service establishments. DOHMH inspectors are required to inspect each school at least twice a year to review food handling operations and sanitary conditions. DOHMH inspectors complete an inspection report for each inspection that is supposed to be maintained in the school and posted on DOE’s and DOHMH’s websites as required by New York City Administrative Code (NYC Administrative Code) Section 23-702, School cafeteria and kitchen inspection data.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

We found that DOE generally did not maintain most of the 30 Manhattan-based school kitchens and cafeterias we visited at the standards its own policies and procedures required. Although we found that DOE’s HACCP Advisors and QASs periodically inspected the schools’ kitchens and cafeterias and reviewed their food safety practices and procedures, and that OFNS generally complied with applicable rules for training and certification of school food service staff, we nevertheless identified specific unsatisfactory conditions at 27 of 30 sampled DOE kitchens and cafeterias (90 percent). The deficient conditions we found included unsanitary food preparation areas, evidence of pests, broken equipment, and food held and served at unsafe temperatures. Consequently, DOE was not in overall compliance with DOHMH Health Code regulations and DOE’s Food Safety Program at those schools.

In the 30 sampled schools we found that food service staff generally completed DOE’s internal Food Safety Checklist daily, that at least one employee with a DOHMH Food Protection Certificate was on-site during the preparation and serving of food, and that DOHMH had inspected the schools’ kitchens and cafeterias bi-annually as required. However, despite those measures, we also found unsatisfactory conditions in 27 of the 30 (90 percent) sampled schools as noted above. Moreover, our review of DOE’s and DOHMH’s inspection reports found that both agencies’ inspectors had reported similar unsatisfactory conditions in 6 of the 30 schools we visited.

Additionally, we found that DOE did not consistently comply with Section 23-702 of the NYC Administrative Code, which requires DOE to post on its website the results of the DOHMH’s inspections of kitchens and cafeterias in the schools, by district. DOHMH is supposed to inspect each school’s kitchen and cafeteria at least twice each school year. However, our review of DOE’s website found that for School Year 2018-2019, DOE did not post any DOHMH inspection reports for 250 out of its 461 schools in Manhattan (54 percent). During our visits to 30 sampled schools, we found evidence that although DOHMH had inspected their food service areas and provided all 30 schools with the inspection reports, DOE had posted the DOHMH inspection reports for only 24 of them (80 percent) on its website.

Appendix I contains a list of the schools we visited with the violation types we found in each school (identified by the violation code numbers DOHMH and HACCP assign). Appendix II contains a list of DOHMH violation types and code numbers. Appendix III contains a list of HACCP’s violation types and code numbers.

Audit Recommendations

To address the issues raised by this audit, we recommended eight measures, specifically, that DOE:

• Periodically retrain staff so they are cognizant and periodically reminded of current food safety and health regulations and practices.
• Ensure that cafeteria and kitchen employees verify that hot and cold food is held and served at the prescribed temperatures under DOE’s and DOHMH’s guidelines.
• Ensure that thermometers are used during all food preparation processes, including cooking, cooling, reheating, and holding.
• Ensure that cafeteria and kitchen employees are aware of the working condition of all food service equipment, that the agency tracks the related maintenance, repair, and replacement requests, and that the responsible units promptly resolve them.
• Ensure that kitchen and cafeteria employees follow DOHMH Food Protection regulations relating to hygiene, including the use of approved gloves and other approved barriers to eliminate bare hand contact with food being served.
• Ensure that the kitchen staff clean all range hoods monthly and log the relevant information in accordance with DOHMH and DOE requirements.
• Ensure that its website contains inspection results covering the required three-year period.
• Coordinate with DOHMH to improve the functionality of both agencies’ School Food Inspection websites so all inspection reports are publicly available and readily searchable as required by law.

Agency Response

In its response, DOE agreed with six of the audit’s eight recommendations and stated that several are “consistent with its practices and longstanding policies.” DOE disagreed with two recommendations. DOE also stated, “The DOE thanks the auditors for their thoughtful and thorough review of Food Safety protocols in school kitchens and cafeterias. We support the goals of the audit and largely accept the recommendations outlined in the report.”