Central kitchen space limited, staff 'making do'

WASILLA -- The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District central kitchen at Iditarod Elementary School is bursting at the seams, says nutrition service supervisor Linda Stoll.

"The only reason we've been able to [provide lunches] is that the staff at central kitchen have been really good at making do," she said. "They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease; we haven't been squeaking."

Until now. At the request of Stoll and other members of the district, the school board has put a request for a new, off-school site Nutrition Services Center to be built under Bond Proposition 1. The cost for the center would be $12 million, but 60 percent of the cost is to be funded by the state Legislature. The total cost of Proposition 1, which included the building of the Career and Technical Education Center and a new Wasilla-area elementary school, is $44,250,000. The annual cost to the average taxpayer will be $40.34.

The central kitchen now cooks about 8,000 meals a day for students across the district; the kitchen is designed to cook 2,500. Space is limited. The kitchen, which was originally built as the kitchen for Iditarod but was remodeled after a fire in the early 1980s, is around 8,000 square feet.

"Ideally, we need around 40,000 square feet," Stoll said.

The equipment in the kitchen is another problem, according to Stoll and her eight full-time employees. One such piece of equipment, known by the bakers as 'the duchess,' is a biscuit cutter that resembles a kitchen tool used on sets of old western movies. A quick look at the back of the cutter and one reads that the patent is April 11, 1931. Other old equipment, such as an oven that has caused numerous burns on one employee's arms, are good reasons for a new kitchen, Stoll said.

"Because our equipment is so old, it is ergonomically unacceptable," she said.

Stoll reiterated that the lunch and breakfast programs offered through the central kitchen operate without local or state revenues. The USDA provides money for the free and reduced lunch program, but the rest of the funds for the programs are provided by the profit made by selling each lunch.

"We've far outreached our limitations," Stoll said. "A new central kitchen would make a big difference."