Click the play button on the video window to the see the story
TAMPA, FL -- Hundreds of kids eat breakfast and lunch inside Hillsborough County school cafeterias every day.
Theresa Knowles is a parent who benefits from those meals.
"It's convenient for me- so I don't have to get breakfast ready for the kids. I have more time to get them ready and get myself ready," Knowles said.
And Hillsborough County has over 200-kitchens and 2,000 kitchen employees.
Hillsborough county and every school district in the state are inspected by their County Health Department four-times per year, as required by the Department of Health. That's much more frequent compared to restaurants, where the state requires only two inspections per year.
And most school districts only order pre-cooked food nowadays instead of raw meat or raw chicken to keep cross contamination issues and foodborne illness outbreaks low and it seems to be working.
For our investigation, we reviewed the records of 11 school districts and almost all of the schools got satisfactory scores in 2008 but there were a few exceptions (see the map).
Miles Elementary School in Hillsborough County received four unsatisfactory reports in April and May of 2008, after inspectors discovered live and dead roaches in an ice machine.
Mary Kate Harrison, Hillsborough's Student Nutrition General Manager says school officials responded right away.
"We're serving kids so we've got to make sure the food is safe. We got out here immediately with our maintenance team. A lot of the equipment was literally pulled out of the parking lot, steam cleaned, washed down, and the entire kitchen was washed down," Harrison said.
"That was a very unusual circumstance. Fortunately, we don't have many problems with roaches in schools," Elliot Gregos, the Environmental Manager with the Hillsborough County Health Department said.
Gregos went on to say less than 3% of their inspections have been unsatisfactory over the past two years (see the map).
"Out of over 1600 inspections, we only had 40-some unsatisfactory. So over 90% are satisfactory," Gregos said.
Hillsborough County schools had 123-perfect inspections out of 271 schools in 2008. And Miles Elementary School's last three inspections were satisfactory.
Harrison said, "That is our goal- is to make every school have a perfect inspection and I think we've gone a long way to meet our goal."
In neighboring Polk County, they serve up 30,000 breakfasts and 55,000 lunches every day.
Out of 163 schools only 11 had unsatisfactory grades (see the map) last year and that's because inspectors found rodent pellets in the kitchen in seven of them.
But Rob Caudill, Polk County Health Department Environmental Administrator says the majority of the schools are very clean.
"Out of the 1,100 inspections that were conducted, 30 of them received an unsatisfactory rating. So over 97% of them received a satisfactory rating," Caudill said.
The concern for student safety is reflected in the school inspection reports from counties all around the bay area.
Many having less than 8 schools with an unsatisfactory grade in 2008.
Here is the following number of unsatisfactory reports for each county:
Pasco County - 1
Desoto County - 1
Citrus County - 8
Highlands county - 4
Hardee County - 0
Hernando County - 0
Manatee County - 0
Pinellas County- 3
Sarasota County - 6
Pinellas County had just three schools with unsatisfactory reports last year. Their issues were mainly hot water not being hot enough and one school had rat droppings.
And Sarasota County schools had six unsatisfactory reports last year out of 63 schools being inspected. Their violations mainly dealt with soiled kitchen equipment and sanitation issues.
But Quintin Clark, Sarasota's Environmental Supervisor says his inspectors don't just mark violations on a report, they train school employees at the same time.
"We want to educate them on food safety - what you're doing is important. This is how you're going to keep food safe. This is how you're going to keep people from becoming ill," Clark said.
