Health officials closed the cafeteria kitchen at Lane Technical High School on Chicago’s North Side Thursday after city inspectors discovered evidence of mice and rats in and around the school, officials reported.
Hot meal service has been suspended, and students were given cold boxed lunches while workers for the Chicago Public Schools and city Dumpster Task Force worked to eliminate the infestation at the school, 2501 W. Addison St., said Matt Smith, spokesman for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
Task force inspectors visited the school late Wednesday after a neighborhood resident reported seeing rats in the parking lot between the school and a Jewel Osco supermarket, and members of Streets and Sanitation’s Bureau of Rodent Control conducted an inspection Thursday morning.
The inspectors found about 1,500 mouse droppings in the cafeteria and storage area, but no signs of mice gnawing into food or leaving droppings in food, Smith said. Outside, inspectors found about 50 rat droppings and many burrows.
The school hoped to clean up the kitchen, pass another inspection and serve hot lunches by Monday, said schools spokesman Mike Vaughn.
Lane Tech is the largest public school in the system, with more than 4,000 students. The school has an open lunch policy allowing sophomores, juniors and seniors to eat off-campus, so the 1,400 freshmen were the ones most affected by the shutdown. However, four elementary schools on the North Side–LeMoyne, Beaubien, Nettelhorst and Reilly–also were not served hot lunches Thursday because their meals are cooked in the Lane Tech kitchen.
Lane Tech’s cafeteria had passed a regular, once-a-semester inspection by the city’s Health Department about two weeks ago, Vaughn said. But health inspections conducted in 2000 and 2001 showed consistent rodent problems at the nearly century-old school.
In September 2002, schools chief Arne Duncan ordered a sweeping rodent extermination effort at all 600 city schools following the suspension of hot meal service at three other schools: Marshall High School, Lowell Elementary School and Simeon Vocational High School.
The cafeteria suspension was the talk of Lane Tech on Thursday.
“It’s incredibly unsanitary and unhealthy,” said senior Melissa Meinecke, 17.
Still, others were not fazed.
“Go to any school and you’re going to find mice,” said sophomore Alexis Thomas, 15.
