BUTLER TWP — Food service employees in the Butler School District are worried about their jobs being outsourced to a corporation, and they spoke against that possible change at Monday night’s school board meeting.

The district is requesting proposals from food service management companies, according to Deborah Brandstetter, director of business services.

The district is considering a change to a management company because it has lost an average of $113,000 per year on its food service over the past eight years.

In the proposals submitted to the district, each company must provide two scenarios: one that includes the cost if the management company took on all Butler food service workers and another where the management company would only oversee management and the school district would continue to hire the food service workers.

Then, through attrition, the food service workers would move to the management company, Brandstetter said.

While this might save the district money, the food service workers are dismayed by the thought of losing their jobs and students losing the local, personal touch they give.

Right now those employees are working under an expired contract from last year.

Julee Diehl, a food service worker at the intermediate high school, is worried that the students will be the ones who suffer from the decision to change management.

“These outside vendors are here to make a profit for their company, not for the district,” she said. “This profit comes at the expense of lower quality foods to keep their prices low. The vendors’ main concern is profit, and this philosophy I am not happy with.”

Diehl said that the food service employees are dedicated and hard-working, providing healthy and nutritious meals to the students that they might not receive from a company.

Diehl said the local people are the ones who keep the students’ best interests in mind, and the district shouldn’t change a system that is working well.

“(Keeping the current system) benefits all of us,” Diehl said. “This benefits the community by providing local jobs for workers, and who better to truly care for our children than our own people within the community?”

Diehl told the school board that the system works well and minimizes costs effectively.

But Brandstetter said that the costs of the food service are not being contained.

“It is not self-sustaining,” she said.

For the 2014-15 school year, the district had total revenues from food service, including the federal and state subsidies, of $2.7 million, but the total expenditures of the food service were $2.8 million. This resulted in a $99,499 loss, according to Brandstetter.

In fact, the district has been accruing losses since at least the 2008-09 school year. In that year, the district lost $46,000, and the losses for the subsequent years were: $136,500 in 2009-10, $133,600 in 2010-11, $67,700 in 2011-12, $145,900 in 2012-13 and $166,000 in 2013-14.

From 2008 until the end of the 2014-15 school year, there has been an average operating loss of $113,689 for the food service.

The request for proposals sent to management companies included a note that the district expects a projected increase in the cost of lunches, about 15 cents per meal. This would put elementary lunches at $2.25 and secondary lunches at $2.50 for 2016-2017.

The district typically has 46 percent of the students buying lunch, with average daily lunch totals at more than 2,900 and average daily breakfast totals around 700.

The proposals submitted by companies also must include recommendations for increasing student purchases.

Sharon Profota, president of the Butler Area Food Service Employees Association, said that an outside company will not save the district money in the long run.

“When a company takes over public work, they earn a profit by slashing my wages and the benefits of my co-workers,” she said.

“Obviously, when workers earn less, we’ve got less money to spend in the local economy, less tax dollars to give back to the school district.

“Subcontracting is a bad idea because it means local tax dollars will leave our community and go into the bank account of the private, for-profit company.”

The district employs about 95 food service workers, Brandstetter said. Those workers had a contract that expired in June 2015.

They are negotiating now, and are working under the previous contract.

The district will open proposals from companies on Friday. A special meeting for the companies to present proposals to the school board will be May 11.

The board is expected to take action on the proposals on May 16.