District Receives Whitsons
Settlement Proceeds
The Huntington School District has received proceeds from the settlement of a New York State Attorney General's Office probe into off-invoice rebating practices by food service management companies.
Huntington received $3,320 as a result of the settlement the state reached with Whitsons Culinary Group, the district's food service consultants. The attorney general's Taxpayer Protection Bureau worked with the State Education Department's child nutrition service during the investigation, which found that the rebating practices "have deprived schools of funding that should be devoted to student nutrition," according to a letter sent to the Huntington School District by Randall M. Fox, chief of the TPB.
The settlement proceeds have been deposited into Huntington's school lunch fund in accordance with state and federal rules.
"Off-invoice rebating involves payments received by food service management companies like Whitsons from food manufacturers and distributors in connection with food purchased on behalf of schools and school districts like Huntington," Mr. Fox wrote in his letter to the district. "Whitsons neither disclosed nor passed on those rebates. New York and U.S. Department of Agriculture rules required Whitsons to pass through these off-invoice rebates to the national school lunch program participants like the Huntington Union Free School District."