Lunch break: High schools to get food courts

Traditional school lunches will be a thing of the past at Flathead High School and the new Glacier High School when it opens in fall 2007.

At the end of the fifth hour of their meeting Tuesday night, Kalispell school trustees decided that catering to the way students eat today - wraps, soups, submarine sandwiches, salads and the like - makes more sense than clinging to the past routine of hot dishes and other elements of a typical hot lunch program.

The result: Both high schools will offer lunch in a shopping-mall-style food court, backed up by a relatively small serving kitchen.

It should keep more students on campus for lunches they enjoy instead of driving over the noon hour. It could even make money, if a similar high school program at Bozeman is an indicator.

And it will do away with initial plans to build a large central kitchen at the new high school. That kitchen would have prepared and distributed food to the entire K-12 district.

A new location will be decided later for the central kitchen, which still will be required for lower grades.

Cory Johnson of CTA Architects said Glacier High School is not the best place for a central kitchen.

"We have got to go out in a month" with bid documents, Johnson told the board. "We're at a crossroads where we need to move on with the design."

Ground breaking for the new high school is scheduled May 25, with the school scheduled to open in fall 2007.

A committee has worked through several generations of central kitchen designs but, with the food court preference surfacing time and again, "it looks like Glacier High School is not the best location," Johnson said.

Trustee Bill Sutton, a high school design committee member, said a commissary kitchen and food court facility would need about 6,000 square feet, while the food court with service kitchen would need half that space.

Flathead High Principal Callie Langohr said high schools are trending toward food courts that serve nutritious items that appeal to teens, a plus in coming years when schools will be held accountable for food served on campus. In addition, senior exit surveys show Flathead High students are dissatisfied with lunch selections.

A serving kitchen and food court also will do away with the need for space-eating equipment to receive, store and reheat food delivered from a central kitchen.

Taking the commissary kitchen out of Glacier High School would free up 2,200 square feet of space and about $224,000 for the remainder of the building, Sutton reported.

The design committee still is considering a cook/chill kitchen in a central area - using a large piece of equipment that fully cooks the food then chills it within an hour for distribution later.

On Tuesday, trustees also:

. Agreed to include a biomass boiler as the primary heat source in the new high school.

A study showed it would burn 740 tons of wood in a year. Local suppliers have indicated interest in supplying the wood chips. That would save $24,800 annually over propane or natural gas costs.

The school received a $240,000 grant to cover half the $480,000 project cost. By building it into the new high school with the original construction, it reduces the cost from a similar system installed in Philipsburg for $680,000.

It would take eight years of energy savings to pay for the system before energy savings would kick in.

Trustee Brad Walterskirchen raised a concern that including the biomass boiler - more expensive than a traditional gas heat system - in the overall high school construction budget could force a trade-off for needed technology, furniture or other items.

"I might say yes otherwise," trustee Tony Dawson answered, "but this has such an aggressive payback" that it is a good fiscal move.

"We are not reducing our construction budget one nickel to get this," board chairman Don Murray said, "plus we're getting a quarter-million bucks to get this."

. Rejected the sole bid submitted to build locker rooms and steel

bleachers in the third phase of construction at Legends Stadium (formerly Rawson Field).

Davidson Construction of Kalispell bid $880,820.

In April 2003, Architects Design Group had estimated the project would cost $550,000, and the school set aside $500,000 in the high school building reserve fund and another $50,000 from the Legends Stadium fund-raising account.

Total costs for the first two phases was about $1.1 million, District Clerk Todd Watkins said. Both are paid for, and work has proven largely satisfactory.

"I am disappointed with the architectural services we got on this," Watkins said, since both athletic director Mark Dennehy and facilities manager Chuck Cassidy communicated with the architects. "And still the price went way up over the estimate."

Rising steel prices were the main culprit, but the bid package also called for 1,600 seats instead of the agreed-upon 1,200.

Dennehy told the board his discussions with the contractor indicated costs could be cut substantially by changing trusses and other items, and that "value engineering" could come into play and allow showers to be added in the locker rooms.

"It surprises me that a project with a budget of $500,000 should come in at $800,000. It should have been a lot closer," Dawson said. "As a contractor myself, this would have been easy to estimate. Davidson went to a lot of work" to prepare this bid.

Walterskirchen pointed out that there is little pressure, for safety concerns, to finish this work immediately. Also, few contractors may be interested in bidding this relatively small project now when there are potential Glacier High School construction bids in the offing.

The consensus was to rebid the work later.

Reporter Nancy Kimball may be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com