유치원 급식 배식 운영의 기준선 분석: 학교급식법 적용 이전 설립유형별 비교

Purpose: This study established a pre-implementation baseline for kindergarten meal-serving operations by comparing the practices across establishment types (public independent, public annexed, and private) in five dimensions: staffing, serving burden (density– time), serving space, equipment, and record-keeping and hygiene education. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 152 dietitians working in Seoul kindergartens from July 2 to 19, 2019. The survey assessed the respondent characteristics, institutional scale, per-meal serving duration, serving space and schedule, equipment availability (including transport and hot- and cold-holding), record-keeping practices (including the National Education Information System [NEIS]), and hygiene education implementation and recipients. The data were analyzed using chi-square tests, Welch's ANOVA, and one-way ANOVA, as appropriate. Results: Public kindergartens (independent and annexed) reported higher full-time on-site staffing, dining-hall-based serving, equipment availability, record-keeping, and NEIS use than private kindergartens (e.g., NEIS use: 94.1%~100.0% vs 12.9%). Private kindergartens relied more often on classroom serving (80.0%), had limited on-site presence because of multi-site assignments, and frequently lacked hot- and cold-holding equipment (14.8%), weakening the capacity for safe temperature control and cross-contamination management. Record-keeping during the serving stage was also substantially lower in private kindergartens than in public kindergartens. Hygiene education was widely reported across establishment types (88.6%~94.1%), but coverage across recipient groups was incomplete, and a significant establishment-type difference was observed only for parent-targeted education (32.4% in private). Conclusion: Disparities in meal-serving infrastructure were evident before regulatory enforcement. Priority actions, especially for private kindergartens, include strengthening on-site professional oversight, standardizing hygienic transport and classroom serving procedures, prioritizing hot- and cold-holding equipment, implementing simplified record-keeping with NEIS linkage, and expanding parent-focused hygiene education. These baseline data provide a reference point for evaluating post-implementation changes and whether establishment-type disparities have narrowed under the School Meals Act.