The Juneau school board voted Tuesday to pay for a private investigation into the floor sealant incident, where a dozen students were served chemicals instead of milk at a summer school program.
The district’s third party investigation could cost the district up to $45,000.
The board also extended its contract with the district’s food service vendor, NANA, for six months. That extension is meant to allow the board to review the results of its third party investigation prior to renewing the contract for the full year.
NANA Food Services senior leadership says the company has taken strong steps to ensure students’ safety after a pallet of floor sealant was delivered to a district warehouse where food is stored.
“We’ve done several things to assure this doesn’t happen again,” said Derrell Webb, the company’s vice president of operations. “We did an in-depth investigation, we brought in our safety people, as well as several members on our management team and reviewed all the processes. Anywhere we felt there was a hole in the process, we rewrote that process.”
He said the company created a new shipping and receiving protocol and retrained their employees on several processes, including one for product tracking.
Superintendent Bridget Weiss said the company’s response to the incident has been diligent, and the extension is the district’s best option this close to the start of the school year.
