CORRECTION: We are reliably informed that the rodents in question were not rats, but mice. We regret jumping to conclusions and have updated thusly. -- Ed.

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Bad news from the Manila Community Center, home of Redwood Coast Montessori’s TK-8th campus.

It turns out that dune-dwelling mice have discovered the Montessori Method, and they like what they taste.

Inspectors from the county’s Division of Environmental Health arrived at the school this morning, as they do at all licensed food-producing facilities in the county from time to time, and what they discovered there was not good.

Specifically: 

Rodent feces throughout the kitchen, including but not limited to, in cabinets adjacent to food + equipment, adjacent to food in dry storage, on top of cans of food in dry storage, and on the floor behind the fridge and freezer.

The inspector decided that this state of affairs was enough to declare the young scholars’ health to be at risk, and so he issued a shut-down order on the kitchen until such times as the usual remediation measures are employed: Contracting with a pest control service, sealing up methods of ingress and egress, discarding compromised supplies, sterilizing everything, stashing everything edible in rodent-proof containers.

Once all that happens, the kitchen may reopen. Until then, its permit 

is modified to only allow service of prepackaged food that can be distributed outside of the food preparation area.

Full inspection report here. We will update when the rodents have been expelled.