Keeping Oklahoma's school cafeterias clean

Nasty violations in your children's school cafeteria. Oklahoma health inspectors say they've found everything from mold to mice in school cafeterias and one of the worst schools is in Tulsa.

Tuesday, March 1st 2005, 10:15 am

By: News On 6

Nasty violations in your children's school cafeteria. Oklahoma health inspectors say they've found everything from mold to mice in school cafeterias and one of the worst schools is in Tulsa.

News on 6 anchor Terry Hood explains how Tulsaâ€™s Cascia Hall is cleaning up.

Cascia Hall had 18 violations in 2004. Moldy vegetables and rodent droppings made the inspectors' reports. But on the department's latest inspection, last Friday, things were much better. The worst violations inspectors found were an open drink in the kitchen, and a missing label on a container.

Cafeteria manager Rick Kamp says both violations are easily fixable. He says there's a reason why inspectors couldn't find evidence of mold or mice on this most recent inspection. Kamp says he stepped up efforts to keep his kitchen clean and his food safe for students. â€œThey had mouse droppings back there, the very back corner we looked at. I called up my friend Dave and I said, I've got a problem with these mouse droppings and I said we need to bait more heavily and lets see if we can bait outside as well, see if we can catch them before they come in, type of thing."

Cascia Hall is not the only school to be cited by the state health department. In fact, the department says its inspectors do such a thorough job that it's unusual for "any" school to come out clean. Their job is to catch violations before someone becomes sick.