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Jeff Mills, the man charged with serving all the meals to D.C. public schools students, was fired yesterday, DCist has confirmed.

Mills’ firing comes in the wake of a contentious D.C. Council hearing in December at which Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and other school officials were put on the defensive over how much the school system spends on breakfasts and lunches. From 2008 to 2012, the system contracted its food services out to Chartwells, a large food services provider, but the company served fewer meals than expected and charged more than estimated. (Chartwells has rejected these claims.)

According to a food blogger Ed Bruske, in early 2012 Mills and Henderson clashed over the use of Chartwells to provide meals to DCPS students, with Mills advocating that the school system do the job internally. Henderson refused to entertain the idea, though.

Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who has worked with Mills on implementing legislation she authored that increased healthy food options at public schools, said in an interview that she was “very disturbed” by the firing and had received no advance notice or explanation of it.

“I wasn’t told and and in a sense I am surprised because at the end of the day he did wonderful things for food services for the schools. He made sure that the meals were more nutritious, that there were fresh and healthy meals, that the Healthy Schools Act was being implemented,” said Cheh.

She also said that she supported Mills’ position on bringing food service back in-house, or at least working with Chartwells or another contractor to bring down costs. Surrounding jurisdictions like Montgomery County make money off of their in-house food services.

“I’ve been trying to encourage them to do this in-house, and even if they didn’t do it in-house, to do it in a way that we didn’t have a contractor that wasn’t taking too much money from us and not doing a good enough job. I regarded Mills as a partner in doing the best job he could, so I’m not sure why they would throw over the best person they had in that position,” she said.

Mills, a former New York restaurateur, attracted the attention of luminaries such as Jamie Oliver when he was hired in 2010 to run the school system’s food services department. Oliver hailed him as a “food revolutionary,” saying that Mills helped “confront D.C.’s childhood obesity crisis by ensuring that 45,000 students have access to high quality school meals and are empowered to make healthy choices.” At December’s hearing, some parents lauded Mills’ work while criticizing Chartwells for increasing the cost of providing food to students.

In an email, Bruske, himself a former Post reporter, said that regardless of Mills’ good intentions, the relationship between the two wasn’t very good.

“He and Kaya Henderson were never on the same page. DCPS is a huge bureaucracy not given to sweeping changes. Mills brought a lot of passion to the job, but not the skills needed to change the political culture. Really, to make changes of this kind system-wide, you need a real expert in school food service—which Jeff was not—who also has the blessing and active support of everyone involved, including the D.C. Council, the schools chancellor, principals and parents. The dynamic at work here was quite toxic, with Mills at one point going behind Kaya Henderson’s back to agitate for the changes he wanted. By the end, he had been completely marginalized by Henderson’s management team,” he wrote.

DCPS officials opted not to comment, saying that they do not speak on personnel matters.