Penn. school district ordered to rebid foodservice contract due to violation

Central Dauphin School District has been ordered to rebid its new, five-year food service contract because the state Department of Education found that the district violated federal guidelines when a teacher took a donation from the company that won the contract.

The Nutrition Group, Central Dauphin's food service contractor since 2010, was the winner of the contract, awarded May 4. The violation stems from a $5,000 donation that The Nutrition Group made in 2014 to Life Writes, a summer writing program for youth sponsored by Central Dauphin School District.

The Nutrition Group's donation – and a second $5,000 donation from Durham School Services, Central Dauphin's transportation contractor – helped pay for an educational exchange trip to Medellin, Colombia, by Life Writes teachers in October 2014.

The education department sent an inquiry about the donation from The Nutrition Group to Central Dauphin last spring and the district provided a detailed explanation. The department's decision came in a July 10 letter to Superintendent Carol Johnson, which PennLive received a copy of the letter from the state Department of Education.

Vonda Cook, director of child nutrition programs for the education department's Division of Food and Nutrition, wrote to Johnson that the department "does not accept ... that the teacher was acting in an individual capacity. The teacher who solicited the donation prominently identified himself as a school district employee."

The education department said it would allow Central Dauphin to use The Nutrition Group as its food service provider, under the terms of the new contract, until June 30, 2016, because it's too late to rebid the contract in time for the 2015-16 school year.

Federal regulations prohibit school districts that participate in the National School Lunch Program from accepting donations from contractors, Cook wrote, adding that "this situation is particularly concerning" because the bidding process was underway for a new food service contract.

The education department would not provide PennLive with copies of the department's initial inquiry to Central Dauphin about the donations or the district's responses because "those documents are still considered investigatory."

The food service contract, like the prior contract that ended June 30, was for one school year with four annual renewals.

The Nutrition Group was the only bidder for the new contract.

Central Dauphin School Board President Ford Thompson said it was "absolutely outrageous to suggest" that the contractor's donation had any influence on the school board when it awarded the new food service contract.

"That's preposterous. It isn't true. It did not influence anybody. And besides that, we only had one bidder," Thompson said. "We did not consider those donations in any way, shape or form when we awarded that contract ... I would say it under oath: it had no impact whatsoever."

Thompson said the school board will begin the process to re-bid the food service contact in September. The board will comply "under protest," he said, but there are no plans to appeal the department's ruling.

"We decided not to spend taxpayer dollars on that," Thompson said.

Whether The Nutrition Group knew that its contract prohibits such donations "is a question for them," Thompson said.

The Nutrition Group did not return several calls from PennLive.