SNOHOMISH, Wash. – Snohomish High School is finally rat free after exterminators spent weeks clearing rodents from the school’s kitchen and cafeteria.

And school board members just approved the bill: $349,133 paid to Clean Crawls Pest Control Services, The Everett Herald reports.

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“The rats were discovered March 2 after a food-service worker reported a strange odor coming from the kitchen, school district spokeswoman Kristin Foley” told the news site.

School officials called the pest control company and found rat droppings in the ceiling, which prompted them to shut down the cafeteria and kitchen for the extermination. For several weeks, the district brought in lunches prepared at Valley View Middle School and served them to students in the gym, the Associated Press reports.

Clean Crawls pulled out the insulation and ceiling tiles and replaced them. They also sealed the building to prevent the rats from returning, Foley said.

She told the Herald in March that district officials contacted the Snohomish Health District to help with the situation and ensure the school meets health safety standards.

The school is expected to reopen its food facilities on Monday.

Snohomish High School is only the latest to be overrun by rodents in what seems to be an emerging trend tied to federal food regulations championed by first lady Michelle Obama and imposed on schools in 2012 that increased school food waste by a whopping $1 billion a year.

San Francisco schools, for example, have struggled with similar rat problems.

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“The new programs have succeeded in feeding thousands of students healthy food, but they have also produced unexpected growing pains, a San Francisco Examiner investigation shows. The district has a lack of refrigerators to handle the extra fresh food, and the increased fresh waste has attracted unwanted guests — rats — for meal times,” according to the news site. “The waste is attracting … a lot more rodents than typically find their way onto school grounds.”

San Francisco Unified School District spokeswoman Heidi Anderson said the roaming rodents are now “a common issue across the nation’s public schools.”

Regardless, several folks who discussed the situation in Snowhomish on Facebook are clearly not convinced the district needed to spend $350,000 to remove the rats.

“They clearly left a few ‘rats’ on the school board who approved this expense,” Steve Kuykendall posted.

“Unless they fixed the two doors that lead into the commons from the outside (ivy-covered area, no less), this was a very expensive Band-Aid on a bullet wound,” Morgan O’Brian added.

“Wow, $350k to get rid of rats,” Jeff Henry wrote. “Way to go government. Screwing us again.”

“Looks like someone’s brother or cousin owns a pest control company,” Joey St. Marie commented.

Keith Allen did the math.

“Let’s say there were 500 rats, that’s $700 per tail,” he wrote. “I know there’s more to it than that, but that’s a big bounty.”

Beth Kuykendall claims she could have taken care of the rat problem for free.

“Gee. Just think. About 12 homeless cats could have taken care of two pressing issues, reducing the homeless cat population and driving out the rats,” she wrote. “Plus, there’d be some eventual cat love going on and students would love it.

“Just like they put homeless cats on hay and grain farms,” Kuykendall continued. “Leave it to stupid city/county government to ONLY see the most expensive solution. I … would love to see the invoice. They could have built a kitchen off site for that much.”