Dover, Ohio - Tuscarawas County Health Department officials have been monitoring the Claymont schools during the ongoing labor strike but they say so far they haven’t observed any major problems.
Environmental Health Director Caroline Terakedis says their inspectors visited each of the district’s six school buildings unannounced Tuesday to check for possible health and safety code violations. She says this is their standard response anytime someone makes a complaint.
“We have been receiving complaints about the Claymont school system, the food handling and the sanitation, so part of what we do is when we receive any type of complaint for anything we have jurisdiction over, we do an investigation,” she says.
Terakedis says each building underwent a full environmental health and safety inspection where inspectors went through and checked for any safety, maintenance or sanitation problems.
“We look at the entire school facility. We’re looking through the classrooms. We’re looking through the gymnasium, the playground. We’re looking through the restrooms. We check pretty much the entire school facility,” she explains.
Terakedis says some minor maintenance issues were noted during a few of the inspections, but she says that’s not uncommon for older buildings.
“Typically, what you see with older schools are you have these same type of maintenance issues that you see every single time you go out,” she says. “We’re not looking at like a big hole in the wall or a big hole in the floor. Damaged ceiling tiles, those types of things, they’re just kind of a continual battle that all of our schools are fighting here in Tuscarawas County.”
Terakedis says their team also inspected each building’s food service operation including food handling and storage practices.
“We do the same standard inspection that we would do at any licensed food handling facility, so we’re checking temperatures, we’re checking cleanliness, we’re observing food handling. We’re making sure that all the requirements of the Ohio Food Code are being met,” she explains.
The inspectors observed two critical food code violations among all the Claymont buildings. One was for raw eggs being stored above ready-to-eat foods at the high school. The other was for not having a person in charge present in the food service area at the preschool. The food storage violation was corrected immediately, and the other required no immediate followup.
The inspectors did not observe any food products being delivered during the inspections but noted that any items must be delivered and received at proper temperatures.
To download the full report, visit https://tusco.tv/download_file/610/0.
TUSCO TV