Serving up info on school cafeterias

PARENTS CAN soon feast on new health inspection data about public school cafeterias.

The Education Department has agreed to post sanitation information online and send parents letters notifying them when inspectors find unsanitary conditions in the city’s roughly 1,300 school cafeterias, state Sen. Jeffrey Klein said Monday.

“This new system will serve our parents a helping of transparency when it comes to the cleanliness of the places their children eat daily,” Klein (DBronx) said. “Parents and guardians deserve to know whether school cafeterias are immaculate or not.”

Officials said they hoped the information would be posted at Schoolfoodnyc.org by the start of the new school year, if not sooner.

Klein said he was introducing legislation in Albany to ensure the information would remain online permanently.

The reform comes five months after Klein, leader of the state Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference, released a report that found 395 cafeteria inspections out of 2,976, or more than 13%, in fiscal year 2015-2016 resulted in a sanitation grade of B or worse.

The vast majority of inspections — nearly 86% — ended with an A grade.

“Families are valued partners in all that we do, and these changes will add another level of transparency for communities,” Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose said.