Catering department to close

The Shoreline School District’s catering department will close at the end of August. The department’s six employees serve food to visitors of Shoreline Center.

Officials decided to close the department because it is not essential to the district’s core mission of educating students, the financial viability of keeping up the program is questionable and because aging kitchen equipment will require substantial future investment, district officials said.

According to a financial report done for 2006-07, the department wasn’t covering its costs, said Marcia Harris, deputy superintendent. The report showed a loss of about $34,000 for 2006-07.

Harris did not have a number on how much closing the department would save next year.

Catering employees and union leaders criticized the decision. They argued that district officials hadn’t supported the department to be more successful and questioned their spending money on a legal battle with the catering department that began in 2005 which ended in late 2007 in favor of the department.

Laurie Rabinashad argued that the district was continuing to carry on other services, like renting rooms at Shoreline Center, which are not part of its core mission. Rabinashad is president of the Shoreline chapter of Service Employees International Union Local 925, or SEIU. It represents the catering department.

As for how the closure of the department affects those who use rooms at the center, there will be no change for some.

Technically, since November those who rented rooms at the center have not been allowed to bring their own food bought from another vendor or use another food service.

However, that restriction didn’t apply to school groups, including PTAs and school sports teams, so effectively things will not change for them with regard to bringing in outside food, Harris said.