Mouse droppings, roaches, chemicals hiding in school cafeterias

But health inspectors are finding these undesirable ingredients — as well as 60-degree yogurt and other critical health code violations — in the kitchens of Washington-area schools.

D.C. Public Schools racked up 296 violations in its elementary schools alone, and 124 more in its upper grades, for everything from blown light bulbs to dead rodents, as detailed in the most recent routine inspection reports.

Spilled food in the corner of a storage room at Brent Elementary School on Capitol Hill was covered with mouse droppings and roach carcasses in December.

At Anacostia Senior High School, health inspectors had to come back just days after an October inspection that found rodent droppings on the shelves, a dead mouse on the floor, and the strong scent of urine.

At Cardozo Senior High School, employees didn’t bother to wash their hands during an inspection three weeks ago.

Among its 200 public schools, Montgomery County saw 30 critical violations and 112 breaches of “good retail practices” — but those noncritical county violations include a roach infestation and toxic sanitizing solution.

In Fairfax County Public Schools, health inspectors found 216 violations. Of the 75 critical errors, many were failures to store cold food below 41 degrees F, the threshold to avoid bacteria and keep food from spoiling too fast.

At Oak View Elementary School in Fairfax, employees stored yogurt at 62 degrees, sliced cheese at 60 degrees, and cream cheese at 59 degrees. At least 10 other schools made similar errors, like West Potomac High School’s stock of 57-degree milk.

“Oh wow. That’s not even cold. I mean, wow,” said Ramona Morrow, the county’s PTSA president. “As a mother, a parent, a housewife, I would never think to have my refrigerator set at such a high level that my food could be contaminated in a short amount of time, let alone serve it to people.”

Another problem Fairfax ran into was diluted sanitizing solution for cleaning countertops and cooking utensils. Rather than a 200 ppm concentration of an ammonia cleaning compound, dozens of schools were caught using solutions around 50 ppm, 100 ppm, even 0 ppm — colloquially known as water — at Woodburn Elementary in Falls Church and Poe Middle School in Annandale.

Paul Regnier, a spokesman for Fairfax schools, said the complaints didn’t seem like a big deal. “People make mistakes from time to time,” he said. “Any time we see this, we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

In D.C. Public Schools, the 183 critical violations had a much different face — and whiskers. At least 10 schools had problems with rodents in its school kitchens, from the urine odor wafting around Tubman Elementary School to the dead mouse on the floor of Anacostia Senior High School’s kitchen.

The majority of Fairfax and Montgomery schools were incident-free, but some lunchroom lapses alarmed school employees. At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Silver Spring, a cafeteria worker “sneeze[d] in hands and proceeded to touch food,” as a health inspector wrote.

At Kensington Parkwood Elementary, an inspector wrote, “Roach infestation observed. … Floors are not clean under and behind equipments. Dead roaches observed.” At Woodlin Elementary in Silver Spring, mouse droppings covered the floor, and at Rock Creek Forest Elementary in Chevy Chase, the sanitizing solution had so much chemical solution as to “make it toxic.”

“We have very few critical violations, and most of the time they’re corrected immediately,” said Marla Caplon, director of food and nutrition services for Montgomery’s public schools.

Caplon said she was unaware of these incidents, but “I should be aware of that, I should have and absolutely will follow up.”

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