The food service program at Wareham Public Schools is here to stay, at least for another school year.

The School Committee voted last month to explore the privatization of the program after it reportedly lost $20,000 in 2013 and was expected to lose about $60,000 for this current school year.

Though they agreed to submit requests for proposals from outside agencies, no requests were made because of a new, restructured program put together by Wareham Schools Business Manager Michael MacMillan and food services director Deborah Perry as well as cafeteria managers within the school department.

The plan, which aims to cut the deficits by reducing salary and increasing sales, among other changes, was unanimously approved by the committee Wednesday evening.

According to the new Food Service Delivery Plan briefly presented by MacMillan and Perry, changes include:

• The reduction of staff hours in each school’s kitchen by creating a ‘shift’ system where some staff are hired for a morning or afternoon shift, which will reduce costs and provide greater flexibility for each school.
• An increase in student participation through several different means, including the creation of a joint student/faculty committee to advise the food service program on the development of menus that will help to meet the demands of students.
• The potential to implement a catering service to provide food for all school meetings and functions and to attempt to cater for meetings in town departments.
• Plans to increase efficiency through the use of more paper products and café style food trays at the high school.
• A monthly report to the superintendent that updates the budget, participation rates, and meals per labor hour per school.

Cafeteria workers came out to a late-May School Committee meeting in droves after they heard about the potential for the program to be outsourced. Wareham High School Cafeteria Manager Jean Smith came to their defense as well as her own, saying it was a “perfect storm of events” that led to the past two years spent in the red.

Though the vote was unanimous to approve the new plan, some members of the committee voiced concern about the course of events that have taken place since the issue first came up in early May.

“It’s great that we’re sharpening the pencils now, but I wish we did go through the RFP process,” said Vice-Chair Michael Flaherty. “This sounds like it will work, but if it doesn’t work and we have to kick in from the ELA budget . . . if we mess up again in-house, then that’s going to come from our educational budget.”

“I think that we’ve had some time constraints,” said Chair Clifford Sylvia, who recommended they set up a mid-year review to assess the budget next year. “We can always go forward with an RFP purely from an informational perspective. We’re not bound by the time-constraints that we have right now. This gives us a little more time, but it also gives our food service folks a chance to make it work. It gives us some options that we didn’t have.”

Superintendent Kimberly Shaver-Hood supported the proposal, and said she hoped to have the new, part-time job availabilities posted sometime this week.