How clean are your school cafeterias?

In Kansas City, Mo., at Southeast High School, the first sign this would not be a good inspection was a bowl of rotting potatoes. And on the food service line, item after item was being served below the proper temperature. In Missouri that's 135 degrees. In fact, some hot food was about 20 degrees too low. Apparently, some of the steam tables were broken and not giving off enough heat to kill dangerous bacteria.

In another school in the district, it was the opposite problem. The milk was too warm. It should have been 41 degrees to prevent bacteria growth that could make a child sick.

Berg: “The people who are to blame are the people at the top, the people who were responsible for training everybody.”

Hansen: “How would you feel if you were a parent in that school district?”

Berg: “If I was a parent in that school district, I would not want my children eating that food.”

Back at Southeast High, apparently the kitchen had more than just students eating in the cafeteria. There were mouse droppings. And there was certainly the potential for contamination there, with a dead mouse and evidence of a hole. And it wasn't just one mouse that was using that hole. There were two on that trap, and a third in another trap. And then the inspector saw another critical violation almost immediately.

The cafeteria worker who had just picked up the glue board with the mice, didn't wash his hands before carrying fresh food into the cooler, which is exactly how germs and bacteria can be spread.

Berg: “If I was the health inspector I would shut down that kitchen.”

Edwin Birch is a spokesman for the school district.

Hansen: “How do you feel seeing that as an official with the Kansas City school district.”
Edwin Birch: “It really kind of tears you apart. We have the duty and the privilege of trying to maintain the safety of students in our school environment, but we also have to do it in our cafeterias where they come and eat, as far as the health concern.”
Hansen: “I've got to tell you, that of all the schools we visited on this trip, Kansas City was the worst.

Birch: “Kansas City? We were the worst? That is very disheartening. It won't continue. You come back to Kansas City and visit those schools, you won't see that again.”

We've heard that kind of promise before from officials at schools we visited in our last story, back in October 2004. Were those promises kept and those cafeterias have been cleaned up?

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