Health plan for all school food staff is proposed

Two members of the new Los Angeles school board majority have introduced a proposal to give health benefits to all cafeteria workers, a top labor priority that could cost the school system as much as $45 million a year.

The prominence of the issue signals the newly elected Board of Education’s eagerness to cement ties with organized labor. These board members were elected this year with substantial support from business leaders who have complained about previous members’ ties to employee unions.

The Los Angeles Unified School District currently employs about 5,000 cafeteria workers. About 2,400 have health benefits; the rest work less than four hours a day and therefore do not qualify. The proposal, to be introduced at a board meeting today, would shift all cafeteria workers to four hours or more per day. The total number of jobs probably would drop, but all workers would have benefits.

“This is a social justice issue, and I also think it’s good for kids,” said Richard Vladovic, who took office last week. He cosponsored the motion with board President Monica Garcia, who took office last year and leads a bloc closely allied with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

All parties acknowledge serious shortcomings in food service in the nation’s second-largest school system. Only 35% of middle and high students eat cafeteria food, even though, districtwide, 78% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunches.

The reasons are myriad, including out-of-date, undersized lunch areas. District policy requires that the last student in line have at least 20 minutes to eat, but the policy mostly is not enforced.

Nationwide, the most successful school systems feed about 60% of secondary students. Districts have better lunch rates when children aren’t stigmatized for being poor. At L.A. Unified, subsidized students must present tickets to a cafeteria worker. In newer programs, all students use swipe cards, with the more prosperous families paying for food ahead of time or after the fact.

Backers hope the proposed measure would pay for itself because more students would be willing and able to eat lunch if served by a more stable and better-trained workforce. Currently, the school system gets $220 million in food aid and takes in $20 million from students who pay for their own food.

The proposal also might lower costs of work-related injuries among cafeteria employees who, backers says, file such claims as their only way of gaining access to medical services.

But in a recent presentation, senior staff classified these offsets as speculative: “The cafeteria fund cannot absorb a $40-million increase in costs, even with greater participation and more efficiencies.” And, “raising hours of just one class of employees for other than operational reasons would appear to be singling out this group for favored treatment.... This step would open the door to all other unions demanding to increase hours in order to receive benefits (and on what basis would we say “no”?).”

Officials already have trimmed $95 million from the district’s $6.2-billion budget, largely to make up for increased salary and benefit expenses.

The administration’s own food service remedy is being put in place at a cost of about $4.5 million a year. This plan envisions increasing hours and granting benefits to only 269 additional employees. It also includes a faster, improved hiring process; having multiple lunch periods; improving lunchroom layouts; and installing a card-swipe system.

“By giving people longer hours based on serving kids, we had crafted a thoughtful basis for extending health benefits,” said former board member David Tokofsky, an original sponsor of the extended benefits. At this point, he said, the board’s alternative “seems to be solving another issue of social concern: people in California not having health insurance.”

So much the better, said Luis Sanchez, chief of staff for board president Garcia: “We need to be committed as a public entity to make sure everyone has insurance.

“Most of these workers have kids in the district. We’re insuring that families have insurance.... The money is found when it needs to get found.”

The idea of extending health benefits emerged in board discussions a year ago, but the previous board never acted, waiting for incoming Supt. David L. Brewer and staff to develop their own approach.

The teachers union supports the benefits proposal, as does Villaraigosa.

A local business leader was less enthusiastic. “This doesn’t seem consistent with the efforts the board has made to balance the budget unless it results in additional revenue,” said Gary Toebben, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The school board should be able to assure the public that this is the highest and best use for an additional $45-million expenditure.”

howard.blume@latimes.com