������Ƶ

More than one out of every five public schools on Oahu failed to comply with federal school food safety regulations in one or more of the three past academic years, according to data from the state .

Specifically, the schools were not inspected by state health officials twice annually in at least one of those years — by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the and breakfast programs.

Civil Beat requested the food safety inspection data in the wake of last December’s at Waipahu Elementary School, which sent more than 30 young children and two adults to the hospital. A subsequent health investigation found that bacteria in improperly prepared spaghetti for the outbreak.

State officials say that Waipahu Elementary staffers immediately addressed all its food safety violations — by correcting errors in its food preparation, cooling and re-heating procedures and then undergoing voluntary training — following the health department’s investigation and follow-up interviews with school employees, according to Peter Oshiro, who oversees the Department of Health’s sanitation branch.

The episode marks the first school-based food poisoning outbreak in Hawaii in recent memory, state health and education officials add. The Hawaii Department of Education serves more than 100,000 meals daily, or as many as 20 million each year.

But the incident, however isolated, raises questions about school food safety standards and whether Hawaii’s public schools are up to par. Civil Beat chose to identify which Oahu schools fell short of the inspection requirements in one or more of the three past academic years — 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 — as one means of looking at which schools could be at higher risk for incidents like the one that happened in Waipahu.

Of the 167 regular public schools on Oahu, 36 failed to obtain at least two inspections in one or more of the last three full school years, the DOH data reveals. The majority of them — 28 — are elementary schools, while five are middle schools and three are high schools. Many of the schools are concentrated in the Kalihi and Palama areas. Others are scattered along the Leeward Coast and the Windward stretch between Enchanted Lake and Kaneohe. (See map below.)

All in all, these 36 schools serve roughly 24,500 students, including more than 15,000 children in grades kindergarten through six. Waipahu Elementary, as it happens, met the two-inspection minimum all three years.

Here’s a list of the 36 schools and the number of inspections they received in the three school years:

And here’s a map visualizing where the schools are located:

The World of Food Safety Inspections

Inspections, which come unannounced and are the onus of the DOH, are meant to ensure that schools and other food establishments are keeping their patrons safe by identifying any food safety violations and requiring immediate corrective action.

In a typical routine inspection, Hawaii health department staff checks compliance with up to 27 food-illness risk measures — things like employee health and hygiene, cooling and cooking temperatures and proper sanitization. There are also another 27 “good retail practice” measures, such as the cleanliness of the floors and walls, Oshiro said.

Establishments don’t pass or fail. Any violations must be corrected immediately — within 48 hours for food-illness measures, according to Oshiro. Otherwise they would face suspensions or fines.

Seven of the schools listed above (the ones with asterisks) only serve meals; they don’t prepare any food and are lower priority for inspections, according to Oshiro.

Oshiro, who has conducted food safety inspections for more than 15 years, also emphasized that public school cafeterias are typically seen as leaders of the pack when it comes to food safety and general sanitation practices.

Very few establishments that sell good enforce sanitation procedures such as hand-washing and other critical protocol as much as school cafeterias, Oshiro said.

Schools, moreover, are much stricter with regards to food safety practices, he said, pointing to their compliance with both state and federal regulations as well as optional record-keeping standards. In fact, the state health department is in the process of adopting federal standards that DOE facilities have been using for years.

“The argument can be made that the DOE is already there,” he said.

Restaurants and other commercial food sellers typically receive inspections once every two or two and a half years, meaning that school cafeterias are inspected as much as six times more frequently, according to Oshiro.

That would obviously put them at a much lower risk for food safety violations and render them “much, much safer than other food facilities in the state,” he said.

Department of Education spokesman Alex Da Silva echoed Oshiro’s comments, stressing that all of the state’s public school cafeterias comply with stringent food safety practices.

“As our high standards show, the DOE is committed to continue serving not only safe, but also nutritious and balanced meals to all Hawaii students,” he said in a statement. “We know that students who eat well are better able to learn and achieve in school.”

Still, the DOH is actively working to ensure that every school gets at least two inspections annually and plans to increase the frequency to three inspections each year starting in the fall.

It’s all part of an ongoing overhaul to the department’s sanitation branch that, when completed, aims to create a “world-class food safety program,” Oshiro said.

Changes are already underway. For one, the health department increased its food inspection staff from nine employees in 2011 to 26 employees in 2012 to allow for more frequent inspections, and it plans on bringing on five more people this year, according to Oshiro.

“We are well on our way to more optimum staffing levels,” he said, adding that employees are reminded regularly at monthly department meetings to make sure schools in their assigned areas have the necessary inspections.

Other efforts to improve the frequency of inspections include new web-based software adopted in 2012 that automatically schedules food inspections, making manual tracking unnecessary. The new technology is helping to ensure department staffers don’t fail to do their inspections.

• Contact Alia Wong via email at awong@civilbeat.com or Twitter at .