The bells are tolling for thousands of students across the state this week, announcing the start of the 1990-91 school year.

By Sept. 4, all 40 school districts will be back in full operation. This year there will be an estimated 441,700 children in Utah's public school system, 5,938 more than last year.That's actually a decrease in enrollment growth and the beginning of what education analysts say will be a leveling in growth over the next five years.

For now, all eyes are focused on this year's incoming crop of students.

Teachers have spent the past several weeks getting ready - setting up classrooms, preparing supplies, organizing teaching materials and participating in staff meetings.

Teachers aren't alone. The start of a school year requires a flurry of activity throughout a district. Consider food services.

For Vaughn Hawkes, Provo District coordinator of food service, and his counterparts in other districts, the start of another school year means lots of hungry mouths to feed.

The Provo District's food service operation has a $2 million budget, half of which will be spent on food. That will include 400 cases of peaches, 1,500 bags of flour, 1.4 million half-pints of milk, and ground beef purchased three tons at a time.

"Our quantities are small compared to what Alpine or Nebo would buy because they serve more students than we do," Hawkes said.

Most of the food purchased by the district comes from within the state.

The district's 120 employees will serve 7,000 meals a day - about five tons of food daily. Preparing all that food requires some food service employees to arrive at schools as early as 3 a.m., Hawkes said.

The Provo District uses a modified central kitchen system - each kitchen prepares its own meals, except for breads and desserts, which are baked at the Timpview High School kitchen and then distributed to other schools.

Some districts, such as Nebo, prepare meals at a central kitchen and distribute them to schools. At other districts, each school kitchen is on its own.

Secondary schools have the same problem as parents of the teenagers who crowd school lunch rooms: "We can't afford to provide enough food to fill them up," Hawkes said.

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Any way you look at it, serving the finicky appetites of youngsters is a challenge.

"We're pleased with the quality of the meals," Hawkes said. "On the whole we think our people do a superior job.

"Our mandate is to provide the most nutritious, economical meal we can to students and to be transparent in the school setting," Hawkes said.

And parents are welcome to stop by for lunch any time for a taste test of the school lunches.

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