My middle school school seems to sell a lot of junk: chips, Gatorade and cookies. The district makes a lot of money from “extras”, and parents have to closely monitor lunch expenses. The “plate lunch” is also pretty junky with mini-corn dogs and nachos. There is talk about “healthy” food but I think the quality has declined over the past ten years. One of my kids refuses to eat it. He is in no way a healthy eater on his own.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this program. I just think the execution at the local level (at least my local level) is poor. The schools view the cafeteria as a money maker and serve food and snacks that kids want to buy. Why eat baked chicken when chik-fil-a is available?
I just looked up the stats for my kid’s school. They are out of district transfers to a school in an affluent area so this may not be very relevant. Only 3% of the about 2500 students at the high school get free or reduced lunch (I would have guessed it to be lower). That’s 75 kids out of about 2500. There are two lunch periods and two different cafeterias so I don’t think the kids on free/reduced lunch would be noticed. I have two kids at the same school, DD always brings her lunch, DS always buys the school lunch, about half the time he picks ala carte and the other half regular lunch. I just mentioned this topic over dinner and found that even though both kids have the same lunch period this year, they chose to eat in different cafeterias. Lunch is ‘friend time’ dinner is ‘family time’ Neither have any clue about who might be on free/reduced lunch.
At our school the regular school meal is $3.50 and milk is an extra $.60. Reduce lunch is only $.40 (not sure if that includes milk or not) If we were to assume all the kids at our school where on free lunch and that the government reimbursed the school 100% we’d be talking about almost $50K but if the school could cut a food staff position that spends most of their time filling out government forms (speculation on my part) and could also purchase more local fresh in session produce I think they might break even.
@3scoutsmom Roughly 41 percent of the kids at my children’s school are on the free and reduced lunch program, and it is considered an affluent district. The state average is 71 percent. Most of these kids are black in our area. That’s why I say the school lunch changes have resulted in resegregation of the lunch counter. The white kids are bringing their own while most of the black kids have no choice but to eat what is dished out to them.
Seems like your area has bigger problems, like the racial segregation of wealth and poverty. What you see at the lunch counter is merely a symptom of the bigger problems.
Of course, if the state average is 71% on free or reduced price lunch, that means that there should be plenty of non-black students on free or reduced price lunch, since no state is anywhere near 71% black.
@EarlVanDorn my state, Texas according to the pro publica website has “on average, 48 percent of students in Texas are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs” I thought this was because of our boarder issue and thought that was high! What state has 71% of their kids on free/reduced lunch???
Our district’s racial make up is:
1% Am Indian
8% Asian
1% Black
10% Hispanic
77% White
3% other
I’m guessing that our free lunch population is much more white/Hispanic than black just based on the numbers. I’m still scratching my head as to how 3% of the kids in our district even qualify for free/reduced lunch and have families that can afford to actually live there. We will be full pay for college everywhere and could never afford to live in our school district. Children of live in domestic help maybe? nasty divorce that let the kids stay in the family home but left the custodial parent broke? maybe a few out of district transfers? I think a few may qualify because of foster care/ adoption rules even though they have a high family income but I don’t know.
I’m not saying that what you are seeing in your area isn’t accurate just that I don’t think it’s the same as in my very little corner of the world.
Personally I think the idea is good, but the execution by schools and food companies has been pretty mediocre. From my experience in high school, they’re cutting corners by just cutting calories and not replacing them with healthier food, which equals poorer and less filling lunches.
My school steadily cut away junk food items like fries and whatnot beginning my freshmen year, and I mean I did realize I was eating less junk food in my senior year compared to my freshmen year… or maybe I just grew more conscious of my diet as I got older haha.
However, I didn’t think my school lunch was inedible, I ate it pretty much every day (I was much too lazy to make a lunch every morning) and they at least had decent fruit and the occasional pasta.
Either way I am glad that I will never have to eat a high school lunch again.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_046.asp lists Mississippi as the state with the highest percentage on free or reduced price lunch in 2010-2011 at 70.6%. This is the highest of all states, although the District of Columbia is higher at 73.0%.
The percentage is 48.1% nationally, so it is not like free or reduced price lunch is limited to the poorest people.
Mississippi is the only state as high as 71% in the National School Lunch program and it is currently 37% black.
On a typical day in the NSLP, student participation nationwide is roughly half white, and a quarter each black and Hispanic.
@JustOneDad There are indeed a lot of whites on the free and reduced lunch program in Mississippi, just not in my school district.
Well, for one your district may simply not be what you think it is. When I was in middle school there were kids from 8 different towns and there were kids that came from like 15 miles away that went to the same school. In fact, I lived in a different town than my school.
Second, 3% is really low. Unless you’re saying there’s no section 8, no projects, nothing at all like that in your area, I don’t know how 3% could be head scratchingly high.
I just looked up where I went to high school, in the Ann Arbor School District, which is a wealthy area and one of the wealthiest in the state, and it was 23% free/reduced price lunch.
My kid goes to a private school and has incredibly healthy, fresh, locally-sourced food prepared by a renowned French chef right in the building. I’m confident that it meets most, if not all of the federal guidelines because the guidelines are fine. The issue is meeting those guidelines on a budget. I don’t think that the guidelines can be met on a budget. We pay up the wazoo for this lunch (breakfast and snacks are also available) and I do a little happy dance every time I write that check because I never, ever have to pack a school lunch again!!! But I don’t think for one minute that it can be done easily and on a large scale on a budget. I would personally choose to ensure that the kids had enough to eat. The middle school where my son went has a large poor population and when they don’t eat the food at lunch and breakfast, they are hungry. Hungry is hungry no matter what the reason, and if the kids absolutely won’t eat certain foods, it doesn’t matter how healthy it is in the garbage can.
School lunches in my nice, middle class area were deplorable. Total garbage. Greasy Chili over a huge pile of corn chips. Packaged pizza at least once a week. Mac and cheese that felt like a science experiment as no real cheese acts that way. Burgers, chicken nuggets, hot dogs every week. Big Whoop, there was a salad bar with nutritionally empty iceberg and some watery tomato wedges that few kids took. Always oranges which is nice if only they were cut or peeled so little hands could actually open them. If you brought it up to the district, they would always say the meals were to code (back then.) My kids pack because we are vegetarians and the vegetarian options were few and very far between. They were always grateful. Not only for the better lunches but for all the time they saved standing in line.
There is nothing wrong with schools being required to serve healthy, fresher meals. If a particular district is doing a bad job of it you need to investigate THEIR choices first because I do know other districts are doing really good work within the new rules.
I do vividly recall when the Reagan administration classified ketchup as a vegetable in poor kids’ lunches…
Other than the salt, it was a better vegetable than some of the ‘vegetables’.
To Zoosermom’s point, I think the Jaime Oliver Food Nation episodes about the Los Angeles School District pretty much explains the uneven quality in school lunch operations today; follow the money, or lack thereof.
Money for various reasons. I’m in NYC and different public schools have different facilities and supplies. I honestly don’t know how it is done as well as it is on such a large scale, but it makes me sad to see kids leave school after having thrown lunch in the garbage and run right to the candy store and get junk because they’re hungry. I have mixed feelings about how it should be done. On the one hand, some places don’t have easy access to healthy, fresh food, but on the other hand, shipping bulk can leave the freshness and quality to be desired. I don’t think Mrs. Obama had anything but the best intentions and with enough money and facilities in individual schools, I know that it can be done. But you know the expression. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
My daughter went through NYC school lunch kindergarten through high school. School lunches have been crappy for decades.
Oldmom, the school lunches have always been icky in some places, but now there is a lack of flexibility that wasn’t present before. As I said, some of the changes have made for difficulties, which is, I think, the reason for so many opt outs.
School lunches are the lowest common denominator. We don’t want them to actually be part of the long-term problem, though.
My kids didn’t do school lunches because they could easily tote a healthier alternative. Many kids don’t have that option and, as a society we know that nutrition and learning are very important together, so we squeeze a few bucks out to provide the minimum, despite the protestations of the selfish minority who have pulled themselves up with their delusionary bootstraps.
Of course, with experience, we’ve adjusted that minimum to be a little better than it was.
I think I read the opt outs are like 1.5%. Is that a lot?
Or district does healthy on the same budget as the old unhealthy. It can be done.