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Salt Lake City parents will have one last chance to ask questions about the dumping of student meals at Uintah Elementary School last January.
But the answers will be provided by outside investigators and not by members of the Salt Lake City Board of Education.
In an email sent to parents on Tuesday, the president and vice president of the school board said that questions should be submitted by Oct. 3 to the law firm Fabian & Clendenin. The questions will then be turned over in their entirety to investigators with the firm Thompson Ostler & Olsen, who will provide written answers in a final public report.
School board members are "hearing from the public that people want to move forward and move on," said district spokesman Jason Olsen.
Last January a lunch manager at Uintah Elementary School threw away the lunches of 17 children whose accounts with the school were in arrears.
The investigating firm recently released a report that found the school nutrition manager bears the most blame for the incident. Investigators concluded that the lunch manager had failed to notify parents of low account balances and had lied to her district supervisor about the school's procedures for serving students.
Uintah's lunchroom scandal produced a backlash that gained national attention, prompting a change in district policy to guarantee that students get fed regardless of their account status.
The lunch manager and her district supervisor were placed on administrative leave and did not return when the school year started this fall.
But Uintah Elementary parents have continued to press for explanations of why the school's lunch manager was punished for following district policy.
Parent Erica Lukes said the independent report was very detailed about the errors made by the school lunch manager, but relatively vague in terms of the failures of school and district administrators who contributed to students having their lunches thrown away.
She said the call for written questions was another example of the school board dodging the issue.
"Clearly they don't want to have any of these questions answered or the subject even talked about in a public forum, as it should be done," Lukes said. "This is just another way for them to keep pushing things back and not have real accountability."
Olsen said the call for questions is intended to provide finality and using an outside firm to answer them will ensure that district officials do not influence the investigation.
He acknowledged parents have lingering questions regarding the old school lunch policy and what happened in January. The final report, Olsen said, will provide clarification about those concerns.
"This is designed to hopefully address those," he said.
A report providing answers to parent questions will be made public by Oct. 17.