At private schools across the country, good cafeteria food is becoming as de rigueur as French classes taught by native speakers, Associated Press reports.
Schoolyard vegetable gardens bloom, tended by future Ivy Leaguers under the watch of "sustainability coordinators." In the kitchen, trained cooks transform that bounty into food worthy of enjoying, not merely enduring.
Unfortunately, in public schools, things remain rather grim.
Debt, warmed over.
Photo: whitehouse.gov
Sure, there are wonderful groundswells of change, such as Ann Cooper's transformation of lunches in the Berkeley public-school system, helped along by a grant from the Chez Panisse Foundation. But these exceptions prove the rule: public-school lunches remain grossly underfunded and generally in the grip of food-processing giants like Kraft Foods and Sara Lee.
Just how bad is it? In Wisconsin, cash-strapped school districts are saving funds by squeezing the lunch hour, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Learning what it means to live in Fast Food Nation, the state's school kids have to wolf down lunch within 20 minutes (elementary), 30 to 34 minutes (middle school), and 35 minutes (high school).
The same budget constraints mean food must be reheated on site, not cooked from scratch. The State Journal describes the resulting eating ritual: "Students peel plastic from the main dish plate, from the side dish plate, from the 'spork' and napkin, and from the straw. They rip open -- sometimes with the help of adults -- milk cartons and packets of barbecue sauce and ketchup."
Meanwhile, budget shortfalls are leading school districts nationwide to enact draconian measures to force parents to pay up. In Louisiana -- which ranks 42nd among states in per-capita income -- one county has decreed that students who arrive at school with no money will be denied food: "no exceptions," not even for elementary-school students.
In Utah, one angry mom is rebelling against a similar policy. Her first-grade son arrived at school one day with his lunch account two days -- $3.00 -- behind. When he reached the cash register that day at lunch, the cashier reportedly ripped his lunch tray out of his hands and replaced it with a roll and a carton of milk. The message: pay up, junior, or no lunch for you.
In other areas, budget-constrained school districts are passing price hikes onto "users": students and the parents who pay their way. In one Massachusetts district, high-school students are organizing to fight a 25 percent jump in lunch prices. The district's reasons for the increase illustrate the sad state of affairs in school lunches nationwide: "The School Committee made the move due to cafeteria repairs, such as a $15,000 bill to fix the high school's built-in refrigerator last November, and the lunch program assuming the cost of its employees' health insurance from the town."
Another factor in that district's price hike is richly ironic. In the past, it kept lunch prices down by making money from sugary, fatty snacks like soft drinks and chips. New federal guidelines forced the district to phase out that revenue source, without making up the shortfall. In this case, the result was a substantial price increase for the same old reheated fare in the lunch line.
What we're seeing is the slow, drip-by-drip privatization of the school lunch program.
Food Fight
Until the 1980s, when President Reagan set out to dismantle the New Deal, the federal government paid for the upkeep of kitchen equipment and the salaries and benefits of cafeteria workers. Now the feds have washed their hands of those responsibilities -- and more than half of U.S. schools no longer have full-service kitchens.
Under the National School Lunch Program, the federal government reimburses school districts just $2.40 per day for every meal for children who qualify for free lunches; $2.00 per day for students who qualify for reduced-price fare; and a whopping $0.23 for students who pay full price. Ann Cooper of the Berkeley Unified School System estimates schools spend about $1.68 per meal on payroll and overhead. For actual food costs, that leaves cafeteria managers with all of 72 cents per each meal.
While that's a pathetic sum, it adds up to several billion dollars annually -- enough to pique the interest of industrial-food giants. While school districts economize, pinch pennies, and pass on price hikes to parents, they find it makes sense to outsource cooking to the likes of Kraft, Sara Lee, and Tyson Foods. School kids once caught a glimpse of lunch ladies diligently chopping up and cooking the day's produce. Now they're more likely to see the Sysco truck lurking out back, unloading the day's haul of stuff like Tyson chicken nuggets and Sara Lee "breakfast sticks" -- both cafeteria staples nationwide.
It's no wonder, given tight budget conditions, that parents are spending more time fighting off price hikes and cruel food-denial policies than they are improving the fare being served. Of course, school districts that want to buy higher-quality food can -- but parents and/or local taxpayers, not the federal government, will be picking up the tab. And that just means more economic stratification in the education system. The National School Lunch Program began after World War II to smooth out income-based inequalities in food access among children. It is becoming a force for institutionalizing them.
The de facto privatization of school lunches amounts to a society-wide divestment in children's health. At this point, the statistics hardly need repeating: Nearly one in six children and teens are overweight, and diet-related (Type II) diabetes -- until recently rare in children -- is reaching epidemic levels.
The money we're saving by slashing school-lunch budgets will eventually be paid to the health-care industry, with interest.
The time has come to reinvest in public-school lunches -- to bring them up to the level now expected at the nation's tony private schools. Banning soft drinks and chips is necessary but insufficient. "These are little Band-Aids," the Berkeley restaurateur and school-lunch campaigner Alice Waters recently told The New York Times. "The whole body is bleeding and we must stop it. We simply must."
That means following in the footsteps of New York's Two Angry Moms and agitating for reform, from the school level to the national level.
The Two Angry Moms urge all parents to show up at lunchtime at their kids' schools the week of Oct. 15 to 19 -- National School Lunch Week -- and ask a set of hard questions [PDF].
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Comments
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amc89 Posted 4:04 am
27 Sep 2007
I brought my own lunch to school everyday so I wasn't so scarred by school lunches, but I fortunately had parents who took the time and money to buy healthy foods for me. The kids who don't deserve to have healthy foods too.
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TariRocks Posted 6:34 am
27 Sep 2007
I don't think that industrialized foods are necessarily making kids fatter or more diabetes-prone - but I definitely see lots of room for making positive and more sustainable changes that provide better nutrition with less negative environmental impact. In my mind, school cafeterias are a prime place where at-volume food choices could make a sizable impact, and send a clear message that even (or perhaps especially) school cafeterias ought to abide by environmentally sustainable practices - not only to give kids the best fuel nature has to offer, but also to teach them habits that could save the planet.
Making sustainable food choices seems like a higher priority than fanning the flames of a fictional "obesity epidemic." I'm a little disappointed to see that jewel of the mainstream media showing up here.
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renegade botanist Posted 3:25 pm
27 Sep 2007
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Skagit Transplant Posted 4:20 pm
27 Sep 2007
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shergood Posted 10:31 pm
27 Sep 2007
After reading this article I went back and looked at classroom pictures of me in elementary school, and I was amazed at what I saw. There were no obese children. There were a few in the six years who were bigger than other children, but no one was the size of the kids I see today.
I am so thankful that I grew up when I did, and that I was able to eat healthy food, even if I didn't always like it. At least there were adults who cared enough to make sure we got the nutrition we needed.
It's too bad I can't say the same about adults today who's only concern is paying lower taxes, even if if means they shortchange their children's futures.
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jaborganic Posted 1:45 am
28 Sep 2007
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renegade botanist Posted 1:43 pm
28 Sep 2007
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Ursula Posted 4:47 am
29 Sep 2007
There are many, many kids who may have nothing else to eat other than the food served at their school that day. It may be hard for some people to believe that, but it is true. For those kids, packing a sack lunch isn't an option. There's a variety of reasons why the school lunch program needs to continue. There's also a long list of reasons why and how the program must be improved upon. Now!
Not surprisingly, we are told there isn't enough money to maintain the school lunch program any longer, not to mention any improvements.
Is it really 'just' a matter of raising property taxes.. again? Really. I keep hearing that we must raise taxes in order to maintain our schools. Yes? Well, I want to know if we're paying the same PERCENTAGE of our taxes to public schools now as we did, say, in 1960.
I want to know if the taxpayers ARE paying their 'share', and if they are, who ISN'T paying their part? ...it couldn't be anything to do with all of the cuts in Education funds at the Federal level, could it?
I've been listening to our 'leaders' pay lip service to our children and their needs, for so long now it's absurd. Year after year I
hear the same speeches that state how precious our children are, that they are THE most important asset, that their health and education and that strength of family and community are EVERYTHING to this country. Blah, blah, blah, and blah.......
It's talk. Empty words that sound good at political rallies, that sound good when the president is bragging to the leader of some other country about how wonderful we are. Empty words that actually still work on thousands of people in THIS country, even as our kids come home with a note stating that Music will no longer be taught, that Art isn't considered a necessary subject and will be cut, that hot lunches aren't free any longer, that teachers will be fired and classes combined, and so, over-crowded. The janitors have been 'laid off' due to budget cuts, oh, and again, new textbooks can't be purchased so we must use the old ones.. and due more students coming in, some students will have to share their text book with another student,
Shall I continue?
Is anybody else highly ticked off? Insulted and
offended that the 'powers that be' keep voting along with the president every time he asks for another cut to education monies, another cut to Educational T.V. and Arts funding, more and more monies taken away from health coverage for these "precious assets"our children, as well as funding taken from Housing, Food Stamps, after school programs and before school programs? Now he's going to veto a bill aimed at health coverage for uninsured children. Why? Well, because it will cost too much, he says. ..and it that same breath, he is asking for BILLIONS more to continue his war games.
Yes, I agree. Our public school lunch program is overdue for a complete transformation. This is Basic Nutrition 101, not Brain Surgery ;)
And I think the Federal government needs to restore the funding of all of the public school programs. They require funding increases, not decreases or cancellations. ...again.. not brain surgery mister president.
..more coffee anyone? :p
Ursula
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chadillac Posted 4:26 am
01 Oct 2007
The Washburn School District is trying out a program using as much local food in its lunch menu as is feasible at its elementary school. The school also has its own garden for veggies, which are used by the school's cooks. And it's exposing kids to gardening itself, which is never a bad thing.
Not sure how much time the kids have to eat, but at least the emphasis on local food puts a little dent in the privatization pressure - and those square cardboard pizza slices.
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