New Haven Independent

Led by unionists such as Larry Amendola and Cheryl Poindexter (pictured) of the city’s management union, local 3144, more than 200 cooks, custodians, parents, and even kids thronged the steps of City Hall Tuesday night for a public hearing of the Board of Aldermen’s Education Committee. They called for the ouster of Aramark, which, they say, is exploiting New Haven school kids for profit, and, maybe, in the process, committing serious financial mismanagement.

Aramark supervises food, facilities and energy; it has been a presence in New Haven schools for 13 years. Yet it did not have a single representative to appear before the aldermanic Education Committee to answer the charges. Nor did the management of the Board of Education or anyone from city government.

The company’s city contracts are now in jeopardy.

Reached by email after the meeting, Kristine Grow, Aramark’s director of corporate communications, had this to say about the meeting: “New Haven Public Schools have partnered with ARAMARK for 13 years, which is real proof of the high quality job the company is doing for New Haven’s students and teachers. ARAMARK has consistently delivered substantial savings to New Haven’s taxpayers, and student participation and satisfaction rates continue to meet and exceed the city’s high standard.”

She also called attention to her view that the Campaign for Quality Services has targeted Aramark in its campaign to organize food service workers. Therefore, she said, “Please consider the source of the information you are hearing.”

In often moving personal testimony Tuesday night, speaker after speaker described tasteless and repetitive fare — mainly “chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, chicken bits, and all the previous on a bun” — infrequent fresh vegetables, and sometimes inadequate portions.

Teacher Michael Ellison, who supervises paraprofessionals at the Helene Grant School, said that if a four-year-old drops a piece of fruit, “they can’t have another one. We can’t replace it” according to Aramark’s procedures. He said that when he has faced four disciplinary hearings in the past week because his paraprofessionals sometimes have replaced the dropped food.

Miyoshi Fripp, whose child Ellison teaches, refuses to eat the school lunch, she said, because it is so tasteless.

Among the most moving testimony was that of parents who also have been longtime cooks in the system, going back to pre-Aramark days. One, a 20-year veteran and now a cook at High School in the Community, said, “I wish you could see the garbage food. I refuse to let my own child eat what I’m serving to others. Nothing but chicken products and pizza and hot dogs.”

She said in effect that food is love, and if this is the way we treat our kids, then draw your own conclusions. More than one speaker recalled the days when Hillhouse High had its own bakery, the wafting aromas from which added a certain caring quality to the atmosphere. Another cook said in the old days if a kid wasn’t feeling well, he or she might be sent down to the kitchen to have a treat and to recover.

Linda Dickey-Saucier, who described herself as an expert in health care disparities, drew a larger context: “Many of the African-American and Hispanic kids are already facing preternaturally high rates of diabetes and other problems. They’re often poor. They often need to have their one good and healthy meal at school, and look what they get!”

Mary Quietto, a cook at Conte West Hills, deplored the waste when the kids just throw the “free” stuff out. Then they are often hungry and go to what she described as Aramark’s “a la carte” items, such as buffalo chicken wings (three bucks for a small portion), which kids pay for out of their own pockets. She suggested there is a method to this, to generate profit.

She recalled the pre-Aramark days when the cooks themselves ordered U.S. government chicken or turkey breasts. “It was a struggle to clean all that, yes, but we prepared it and the kids had real, healthy, baked chicken.”

Aramark orders en masse, said speakers including researchers with the SEIU-financed Campaign for Quality Services. They suggested the company aims to receive rebates based on volume, perhaps from Tyson Chicken or other large suppliers. The target is not healthy food, it was charged, but a better bottom line.

Nevertheless, since 2004 the food services have run a deficit. Aramark admits to a $1.1 million deficit this year. SEIU came into possession of leaked documents, reported on in this Register article, suggesting the deficit is even higher, perhaps closer to $2 million.

One way that happens, Mary Quietto added by way of example, is that she routinely signs off on invoices for a case of 24 bottled waters for which the school system pays $5.61. She asserted the same product is available at Stop & Shop for $3.99. “Recently,” she said, “we paid $10 for a single watermelon. And I was told to get 60 slices out of it.”

“With poor quality, poor results, and a deficit,” Quietto said, “it’s a no-brainer why the company is not fired.”

Protesters such as Bob Mountouri (on the right) and Mark Bohannon, president and vice president respectively of Council 4 local 287 of the Service Employees International Union, have already achieved a partial victory: Instead of automatic renewal with Aramark, the Board of Education has both contracts for food services and facilities maintenance out to bid. But the protesters want something more: a return to self-governance, to cook and clean for themselves with their own supervisors.

Bohannon said his members might be able to work with another management company if it was a true partner and spoke “to the people in the trenches.” Mike Terrace, the secretary of the union, recalled that in the first year of Aramark, 1994, “things were successful because Aramark’s lead guy worked with city personnel who knew how to get things done.”

The alders were concerned to hear the Campaign for Quality Services describe the redacted documents that the city and Aramark have provided, despite Freedom of Information filings.

“Citizens are being kept in the dark,” said Heather Szirlag, one of the researchers, “by their own government.”

They were also receptive to suggestions made by a wide range of food activists, such as Jennifer McTiernan of CitySeed and the Food Policy Council, that the Aramark crisis in New Haven could be solved only by long-range better food policies at the federal and state levels.

In the interim, she and other speakers, such as Fair Haven Alderwoman Erin Sturgis-Pascale, suggested that some schools begin to grow their own food both for the nutrition and the learning experience.

McTiernan and a colleague from the Food Policy Council, Tagan Engel, said that one of the ways improvements in food quality could be attained is if the RFP, the request for the proposal, has language calling for fresh and local produce. The Council offered to work with the board. However, since the RFP is out already, the speakers urged the alders to consider whoever replaces Aramark to be temporary.

East Rock Alderman Allan Brison was excited about such ideas as working with the Food Policy Council, CitySeed, and Common Ground High School, which already grows food.

Hill Alderwoman Jackie James (pictured with Wooster Square alder Michael Smart) apologized for munching on bad, bad Doritos during the hearing. She said she has five siblings in the system, and all of them find the food so deplorable they come home to eat.

“Frankly,” she said, “I’m appalled the parents and kids in the schools, the consumers, have to come here to pour their hearts out like this. And why isn’t a member of the Board of Education here? Or the mayor? Ultimately he’s accountable for this.”

She noted that the aldermen have no control over the RFP and cannot pull it back, although the committee, she said, will be writing a letter to the mayor.

Nor were representatives from Aramark (at press time) anywhere present, although two men from a rival bidder were listening. They said they came by to hear what people were asking for. “People want better quality,” is what they said they heard, and suggested they could provide it. They did not want to be identified.

There are only three bidders on the food contract, including Aramark. No information was available on the status of the facilities management bid.

Lou Mangini, a representative from U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office, said she feared that in the case of Aramark, “transparency and truth have taken a back seat to fraud. The federal accountability office has begun an Aramark investigation at my request.”

A request for response from Will Clark at the Board of Education was not responded to by press time.

Larry Dorman, spokesperson for Council 4, said the union would continue to apply pressure, including a large rally planned for later in the spring.