Health Code Violations in New York City School Cafeterias

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian today. Now, we'll turn our attention to reporting coming from my colleague, Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom on the cleanliness of our kids' cafeterias, ooh. While school lunches have never been the pinnacle of fine dining, they should at least be safe and healthy options to fuel children throughout their school day. Unfortunately, New York City schools are falling short of these minimum requirements.

According to data and health reporter Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, 1/5 of New York City public schools received critical health violations in their cafeterias in the most recent health department inspection. Among those, more than 230 schools were repeat offenders and had racked up critical violations over at least two inspections in the last two years. What does this mean for the health and safety of our city kids at school? Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky joins me now to answer this question and more. Jaclyn, it's great to have you here on The Brian Lehrer Show in studio.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Thanks for having me. Sorry, this is going to be gross.

Brigid Bergin: [chuckles] Good listener warning there. Let's just start out with the basics. What exactly is a critical health violation? What kinds of violations would be considered the most critical?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Yes, that term critical violation is mostly reserved for the really gross violations like pests, so flies, roaches, signs of mice, temperature control, which is a big source of foodborne illness, and the likelihood of cross-contamination. Just as a caveat, even though those sound really bad, one or two of those doesn't mean you're going to have an outbreak of foodborne illness in a cafeteria, it's really them stacking up and over time.

Brigid Bergin: Oomph. You looked at where these violations have happened most frequently. Which schools do have the most critical violations?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: It depends on how you slice it, but looking at the most recent inspections, one that really popped out to me was PS 146 in East Harlem. They had four critical violations in their last inspection, which is pretty high. Most schools have none. The violations were flies, signs of mice, possible cross-contamination, and under-trained staff. Although the good news is that two of those violations have since been fixed, but the mice and the flies are still a problem.

Brigid Bergin: Oh, man, okay. I know in this reporting, you didn't just look at New York City public schools, you also looked at health code violations of private schools as well. How did they stack up? Are kids eating better there or are the public schools keeping pace?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Interestingly, private schools tended to do worse on these health inspections than public schools.

Brigid Bergin: Huh.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Inspectors were about twice as likely to find a critical violation at a private school compared to a public school. There's a couple of theories as to why this might be. One of them, it's like a chain restaurant versus a mom-and-pop shop. Every private school is doing it their own way and that might make it harder to pass a health inspection.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Listeners, we know that you have thoughts and feelings and things to share on this topic. Are there any school food service workers listening in? What are you seeing in your workplace? How is food safety being addressed? Are there problems with school infrastructure, funding, or something else that makes it more difficult for you to ensure quality food just to serve to students? Parents, is there anything that you hear from your kids? Tell us about the food in your kids' school cafeteria, or kids, if you're home from school today, we'd love to hear from you too. Please call in. Have you ever gotten sick from the pizza bagel or the salad? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC.

That's 212-433-9692. Help us report this story. Also, we'd love to hear from anyone who works in a school cafeteria, but also anyone who's worked in any large-scale cafeteria or food service operation. Maybe in a large office building or for a caterer, maybe you faced similar challenges. We want to hear from you too. Please weigh in. The number, 212-433-9692. You can also text or tweet @BrianLehrer. Jaclyn, why are city schools repeat offenders? Is there not an ability to improve the cleanliness or administer any sort of punishment to schools with multiple critical health code violations?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: One thing that I was surprised to find out, a lot of it has to do with the age and condition of these school buildings. By far, the most common critical violation is signs of mice, and all these schools have pest control programs, but an aging school building, it's going to have nooks and crannies. Even if you're regularly coming back again and again, critters are going to find their way in no matter what. Then there's also a problem with understaffing.

Brigid Bergin: You went and you spoke to kids at some of these schools. We're going to bring some of their voices into the conversation. Here is Queenie Cow, a 10th grader at Stuyvesant High School who had to share her experience eating some of the food.

Queenie Cow: I found a worm in the salad.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Are you serious?

Queenie Cow: Yes. It was like a small baby one.

Brigid Bergin: Just in case anybody didn't hear exactly what Queenie said, she said, "I found a worm in the salad." Jaclyn, what do we think this worm was?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: I truly have no idea. I think the question will haunt me for the rest of my days, but what I will say is that my sense, and also from talking to some food safety experts, that probably has more to do with the source of the food like the supplier of the food. I don't think worms snuck in from the cafeteria or anything like that.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Perhaps, Queenie was just unlucky to get a bad bag of lettuce. Did any of the other kids you spoke to find other signs of vermin in their food or in their cafeterias?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Nothing else in their food. Overall, they were pretty chill about these allegations. They were like, "These are old buildings, there are going to be mice," but Queenie's case was definitely unique.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, that one would leave a mark. Jaclyn, what kinds of illnesses could children be exposed to by eating in cafeterias that have multiples of these critical health violations?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Most of these schools, even like Stuyvesant, these one or two mice violations, again, it's not going to cause food poisoning almost ever, but if a school really does have a long history of these violations, that can be very predictive of an outbreak of food poisoning or some kind of foodborne pathogen. Those are the two types.

Brigid Bergin: You said the students were mostly pretty chill, but did you hear any concerns about the safety of their food?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Again, they were just so blase about it. They were like, "Yes, yes, whatever." Even the people who didn't feel great about how the food tasted or looked, didn't have any reports about it like making them feel sick, so that's a good sign.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian Lehrer today, and we're talking about how clean or not the city's school cafeterias are with my guest and colleague, WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky. Jaclyn, you also spoke with Francis Solinder, a sixth grader at Robert F Wagner Jr. Secondary School for the Arts and Technology in Long Island City, Queens. Here's what she had to say about her least favorite lunch foods.

Francis Solinder: Mushy green beans, weird corn, pizza, and vegan chicken nuggets, which everyone hates.

[laughter]

Brigid Bergin: Oh, man, thumbs down on the vegan chicken nuggets. We know that this was something that Mayor Adams touted bringing in Vegan Fridays as part of his efforts to improve school lunches. He also invested $50 million in 2022 into building up some school cafeterias, offering food court-style experiences in about a hundred schools. Did any of those schools have health code violations? Do you know if food quality improved or was it all a fail like the vegan and chicken nuggets?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Because of the way the data was set up, it was difficult to see if the food court-style or improved cafeterias had different outcomes when it came to health code violations. I will say, though, that students who attend those schools had positive things to say. They liked having fruit salad, they liked having fresh options, and they liked having a wider array of choices, but the vegan chicken nuggets were widely panned.

Brigid Bergin: Let's hear from Roberta in Queens. Roberta, I understand you are a teacher. Is that right?

Roberta: Yes. Good morning. I am a teacher and I've seen food at two different schools. I serve two schools. I want to compliment the administration and powers that organized this for some new recipes that, in theory, could be very good, but the execution is overheating the foods. They're reheated and reheated and reheated to the point where they get very mushy or dried out, especially breaded products. A mozzarella stick is very appealing to a child if it's crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, but they're not being served like that. The recipe is good, but the heating process is poor.

Brigid Bergin: Roberta, thanks for that. I think that sounds like a better way to eat a mozzarella stick to me, too. I appreciate that. Jaclyn, did you hear any concerns from, or get a chance to speak with any of the food service workers who were responsible for preparing some of this food?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: I didn't for this story, but I definitely heard about the overheating and reheating that Roberta describes. Francis definitely used the word mushy several times, and that was also one of the chief complaints about the nuggets, was that that process leaves them very texturally unpleasant. Coming back to the issue of staff, just in my research for this story, I definitely came across reports of understaffing and also folks not being given the training that they needed to feel really confident about serving healthy, tasty, safe food.

Brigid Bergin: We're getting in some interesting texts. One listener writes, "Hi, I worked in food service at two high schools in Long Island. My question is, who is running these New York City school kitchens? The public school kitchens I worked at, were not run by school districts, but by third parties, Aramark and Whitsons, a Long Island private firm." Jaclyn, do you know how these kitchens are operated?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: It's a good question. The data that I analyzed does have a field for the permittee, like the person applying for the permit to serve food. For private schools, it's pretty revealing. They'll often name specific vendors. For public schools, it's obscured. It just says New York City Department of Education.

Brigid Bergin: Interesting.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: That's a really good suggestion for something to dig into, like who's supplying this food?

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. We have another listener who texts, "Restaurants with well-behaved diners have a hard time keeping up with regulations. Hundreds of little kids in a cafeteria making a mess, there's absolutely no way any school can pass a health inspection." A little bit of sympathy for the food service workers in the schools from that listener. Jaclyn, in your piece, you report that kids are also anticipating a reduction in the options that they actually like to eat in these cafeterias due to the mayor's budget cuts this year. When is that happening and what's the things that you're hearing that they're going to miss the most?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: It's actually, I believe, starting today, the mayor's $60 million budget cuts to the school food budget, and it really is targeting some of the items that kids say they like the most. Chicken legs and chicken thighs, that was reported by Chalkbeat, vegan cheese burritos, salads, a pretty wide range of items that kids enjoyed when maybe the hot entree wasn't their favorite. Those are some of the ones that are getting cut.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Mark in the Bronx. Mark, thanks for calling WNYC. I understand you're a retired teacher.

Mark: Yes, and the issue that I realize might be important to discuss is that I was a teacher at the tail end of the time when the cafeterias cooked their own food, most of it anyway, and to cook at the school I was in and I was working with very difficult kids, so I had to eat lunch with them every day. For a couple of years, I ate the school lunch every day. I was there when Mrs. Santes, I even remember her name, lost her job as the main cook and the food started being delivered to the school. I think that the fact that food that's delivered in that case and that kind of food at other places too, it usually doesn't stack up to real home-cooked food, which so far as I know, no longer exists at all in the schools.

Brigid Bergin: Mark, thank you for that perspective on what it was like in the schools when you were in as a teacher. Let's go to Sharon in Morningside Heights. Sharon, you're on WNYC.

Sharon: Hi, I'm a parent in the public schools and my daughter's elementary was active on the PTA executive board, which our PTA closet was also the pantry for the kitchen, the dry goods, canned goods supplies. It's related to what you're talking about with pests, but the conditions in the cafeteria and the kitchen, I don't think normal people who don't go into a public school kitchen realize what kind of conditions the staff is working under. The heat is insane.

In the shoulder seasons, which are getting longer in New York, September and June, when it's hot outside, the kitchen ovens are running from before school for breakfast through lunch for all the kids, plus if the school serves an after-school snack, which many do if they have after-school programming, and everything is delivered as the previous caller was saying. It's pre-cooked somewhere else, and then heated in the building. One problem with the old buildings, you can't build a new kitchen, you can't cook on-site, but I think people underestimate the value of serving a cold lunch in cold weather.

It's not necessarily a worse lunch, but having the ovens on generating this much heat, not just for the kitchen staff but for everyone who works in the building because the heat doesn't stay in the kitchen, of course, it radiates up through the rest of the building. In the old buildings that do not have air conditioning in all spaces, I hope that most of them have it in classrooms at this point, but I'm not confident that that's across the system. The heat is a problem. It's very difficult to learn and to teach and to remain energetic in a room that is just way too hot.

Brigid Bergin: Sharon, I have a question for you. I need to do one piece of business. This is WNYC FM-HD and AM New York, WNJTFM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. Sharon, I'm just curious since you are on a parent board, is this something that you've talked about there? Is this a concern that has come up in terms of both the idea of the cleanliness of these kitchens, and then also this idea that the administration is cutting back on some of the food items that kids seem to like a lot of?

Sharon: Not so much. The cleanliness we see what we see when we're in the building, and we definitely see that in an old building with the nooks and crannies, mice are going to be a continuous problem. It just requires a lot of effort to stay on top of it. It can be done, but it requires a lot of effort. As far as the food selection, what I noticed is that schools that have a really active and persistent TTA have a fighting chance of supplementing a bit. The whole question of what to serve kids is this complicated palate and it's your, what do you give them that they will eat that will also be healthy?

You can't system-wise solve the problem when there's not enough space in the building to have a functional kitchen. From my vantage point and from the people that I know, one potential solution is stop trying to make every meal a hot meal. It doesn't have to be. You could have a nutritious, balanced lunch or breakfast with choices that isn't warm. Maybe in the winter that's a necessity, but in September and in June, it's something that they're mandated to do and ready to do it.

Brigid Bergin: Sharon, thank you so much for that call. I want to get in one more caller. Let's go to Vito in Ocean County. Vito, you're on WNYC.

Vito: Hi. My question is, what does the Board of Health have to say about this, and how often do they go in there on inspection?

Brigid Bergin: Vito, thanks for your question. Jaclyn, can you fill in some of those blanks first?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Sure. I reached out to the Department of Health for this story just to run my findings by them. One thing they said is that they were the ones who gave me the tip to focus on these critical inspections specifically and also said to be careful, you can't really make these apples-to-apples comparisons, for example, between private schools and public schools. As far as the schedule, they do these inspections at least once a year, oftentimes more for some of the more problematic schools.

Brigid Bergin: Vito, I understand, did you work in a school cafeteria or have experience with school cafeterias?

Vito: I worked in the early '80s and most of the '80s in food services, including Merrill Lynch Conference and Training Center. Part of our job was, even though the food came in there, we inspected it, we made sure it didn't get to someone's plate when it's too late. I'm just wondering if maybe there's a program to be implemented where the food at that one particular school temporarily can be prepared.

Brigid Bergin: Vito, thank you so much for that call and that suggestion. [chuckles] Jaclyn, I shall tell you, we're getting a lot of texts from listeners on the worm in Queenie's salad. A debate is raging over whether it is a maggot or potentially a sign of the flies that you found to be critical violation or potentially, as we also suggested, could be a possibility, something in the supply chain, something in where that lettuce came from. I know you said you ran your findings by the health department, but did they give you any explanations for why certain critical violations might occur, something like we heard in Queenie's salad?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: I didn't get the chance to talk directly to the Department of Health about the worm incident, but I did talk to a food safety expert at Rutgers University. He frequently takes food off the line at the dining hall at Rutgers to just test it for pathogens and stuff. He was pretty insistent that if a bug is in food, it's almost certainly a result of the supplier, particularly something like fresh vegetables or raw lettuce. Especially given what other callers have said about the food being very prepackaged and just reheated, or not in the case of salad, it's conjecture, but my guess would be that it came from the supplier.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. I want to read another text from a listener who writes, "I wouldn't judge New York City school cafeterias too harshly. As a food sanitation inspector, not in schools, though, I'll say you can find these problems everywhere; in restaurants, anywhere food is prepared and served. It does relate to staffing, training, budgets, as well as leadership and enforcement. People are very stretched these days. The worm could have come from the field where the salad was grown." We couldn't get a comment in there without responding to Queenie's worm, which is clearly the takeaway that a lot of people will have from hearing this.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Absolutely. Just following up on that, it's also important to note that these meals are absolutely a lifeline for New York City students. 15% of New Yorkers are food insecure. That means they don't have enough to eat, and these schools serve breakfast, lunch, and oftentimes an afterschool snack. I think it's important to acknowledge they serve hundreds of thousands of meals each day. It's a huge enterprise.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. I look forward to the next iteration of your reporting. Jaclyn, as always, we're going to leave it there for now. My guest has been Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, data reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Thank you so much for joining me and maybe next time we'll talk about something a little less gross.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: I hope so. Thanks for having me.

 

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