BRADFORD, Vt. — The future of Bradford Elementary School’s food program is uncertain after the School Board floated the idea of outsourcing the service last month.

To cut costs, the Oxbow Unified Union School Board considered replacing Bradford Elementary School’s in-house food program with The Abbey Group, a Sheldon, Vt.-based company that provides food for about 140 schools across Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and upstate New York.

Orange East Supervisory Union, or OESU, already contracts with The Abbey Group to run the food service in Oxbow High School, Newbury Elementary School and Waits River Valley School. Those three schools’ food programs cost the district much less than the schools not operated by The Abbey Group.

“If we go to Abbey Group, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay on because I won’t be able to afford my mortgage or even a car payment,” Courtney Rose, a kitchen staff member at the elementary school, said in a recording of a Feb. 12 board meeting.

The board rejected moving to The Abbey Group in Bradford next year, but, “there will be some changes, but not significant changes” to the food program in the upcoming fiscal year, beginning July 1, board Chairwoman Danielle Corti said at a March 12 meeting.

In addition, a committee will be formed to examine the food service’s finances.

The day after that meeting, one kitchen staff member was alerted her position will be cut out of next year’s budget, according to Dawn Phelps, the food service director at Bradford Elementary.

“This is somebody’s livelihood they decided to cut,” Phelps said.

In fiscal year 2024, the three schools who use The Abbey Group lost a combined $500. Bradford Elementary’s food program ran at a $94,000 deficit, according to documents provided by the district.

Food services have their own budget separate from the general fund. The meals and part of the employees’ salaries are covered by reimbursements from state and federal programs. The remaining dollars must be allocated during the annual school budget meeting. But since 2021, the food program had been covered by surplus funds the school collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, Corti said in a phone interview.

Now those surplus funds are gone, but the large deficit continues.

Switching to The Abbey Group at Bradford Elementary is “an option that needs to be considered in order to be fiscally responsible,” Corti said.

But the numbers aren’t adding up for Phelps.

“I was told I was over budget but when I crunched the numbers, we were in the budget,” Phelps said in a phone interview on Tuesday. She still has not been given adequate information on the food service’s budget she said.

Rose, one of the kitchen workers, worked for The Abbey Group at Oxbow High School before joining the staff at Bradford Elementary.

“They don’t pay their employees enough to live,” Rose said at the meeting. “I had to get a second job to survive working at The Abbey Group.”

Starting pay at The Abbey Group is $17 an hour, Bob Hildebrand, the food service director at Abbey Group for 10 schools including the three in OESU, said in a phone interview.

Rose said she is making $3 more per hour at Bradford Elementary than she did with The Abbey Group.

Billy Brigtsen is the head chef at Bradford Elementary. He worked in restaurants in New Orleans and New York for decades before joining Bradford Elementary two years ago.

Brigtsen makes homemade pizzas, bagels and English muffins every week for the students.

“Good wholesome food is all the kids really need and want,” Brigtsen said.

When Brigtsen was alerted to the potential switch, he and his wife, Jill Baron, who have a second grader at Bradford Elementary, wrote a letter to the board and rallied community support for the current food program.

“The most effective strategy was talking to other parents and caregivers at my son’s basketball practice,” Baron said in a phone interview. “Everyone had wonderful things to say about the food service program at Bradford.”

Second-grader Hannah Gravlin wasn’t a huge fan of school lunch but that changed when Brigtsen became head chef.

“Last year my daughter told me ‘I don’t want home food anymore, I want school food,’ ” Hannah’s father, Josh Gravlin, said in a phone interview.

Gravlin’s son and niece attend Oxbow High School and “neither one of them really like the school food,” he said.

The quality of The Abbey Group’s meals came under fire during the Feb. 12 School Board meeting.

“I think the product that we put out and put our heart and soul into on a daily basis is way more beneficial than a group coming in and popping a meal into the microwave,” Bradford Elementary kitchen staff member Curtis Grady said in a recording of the meeting. “Abbey Group gives you TV dinners.”

However, in a phone interview, Hildebrand called this accusation “a bunch of garbage.”

“We cook from scratch as much as we possibly can,” he said.

A graduate of New England Culinary Institute when it had a campus in Montpelier, Hildebrand sometimes fills in in the kitchen himself. On Monday, he was at Newbury Elementary baking homemade bread and cooking soup from scratch, he said.

If the board ultimately does decide to outsource the food service, Brigtsen said he would leave Bradford Elementary.

“It’s not how I cook,” he said. “It’s different food.”

The board plans to discuss creating a committee to examine the food service’s finances, Cortis said. The next board meeting is slated for 5:30 p.m. on April 9 at Oxbow High School.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.