By Alan Van Ormer
Beacon editor

Baltic students will have a new food service company providing them breakfast and lunch after the Baltic Board of Education awarded a food service management contract for next year to Taher, based in Minnetonka, Minn.
Lunchtime Solutions had been providing food to the students, but the board members chose the new company because of a lower bid price. The school district awarded the bid to Taher, and now has to finalize the contract.
“With Taher at 40 cents less per meal, I don’t know how I could say that we should go with Lunchtime Solutions,” School Board Member Pat Mack said.
School Superintendent Bob Sittig said the proposals had to meet certain specifications, but the programs could vary slightly.
Lunchtime Solutions had provided the school’s meals for the past five years. Each year, the food service company did a student survey to find out overall satisfaction and what can be improved on in their food service program.
The latest survey saw the overall rating of the food service dip from 3.0 to 2.8. More than 150 middle and high school students participated in the survey.
“I can’t honestly say there haven’t been issues that have come up,” Sittig said. “However, Lunchtime Solutions has worked with the school district to rectify those issues.
“If the two proposals would have come in at same amount of money, I doubt that we would have switched,” he added. “However, that ultimately would have been a school board decision.”
According to State law, only a one year contract can be signed with a food service management program, but can be renewed up to four times without going out for bids.
After five years, the contract must be rebid, which is what the Baltic School District had to do this year, according to Sittig.
Taher does not work with South Dakota schools, but does provide service to Marshall, Minn., and South Sioux City, Neb. The school board awarded the contract to Taher for one year and then will have the option to renew the contract up to four years without taking bids. The board will set lunch prices in July.
Sittig said Baltic would be Taher’s first South Dakota school.
“We wanted to find out a little bit about them. We called some schools that they currently have,” he said. “We received good reports from those schools. That made us more comfortable with them. I am aware that they have bid other South Dakota schools, but they just haven’t got those contracts to this point.”
Elizabeth Reiss contributed to this article.