My son told me today that his school lunch ladies are having to get creative to feed the kids at school. Apparently, they can't get plates or forks from their normal vendor. They had to go to Gordon's and buy the thin paper plates.

They also said they are running into problems getting milk and other items. He said during the 3rd lunch period today, they served mashed potatoes with pizza.

I'm sure it could be partly due to them trying to use up food before Christmas break, but he said they verbalized concern about getting food after school resumes. I told him he might need to take his lunch instead of buying lunch.

Is anyone else seeing this?

It's been a problem in many states and has been on national news a few times this semester. It's usually blamed on the supply chain. Right now I don't know of any problems in our local schools, but there were concerns a couple months ago.

 

Our free lunch is still flowing fine , most of my kids would eat any thing not nailed down.
The lunch lady 5/8 grade lives at The end of the road and really try’s to make food the kids will eat .
She gos to the store an buys ingredients with her own money to add to the lunch .
the high school lunch is not bad but the girls bring lunch some times , they can walk to a strip mall for lunch .
The oldest boy in school brings his lunch he is on a special diet so he eats left overs or soup and a sandwich .
I always ate school lunch and could find some thing to eat at the counter .
I would get milk and cooks for snack for 50 cents a week.
Lunch was 35c a day .
We where getting school lunch delivered to the house when the schools where locked down.
6 Kids, we would have 6 lunches in a bag for each day all measured out .
The schools get government grants that pay for different things .
If they don’t fallow the guide lines they lose all the money for every thing in that category
My wife is the school board chairmen .

 

Here’s some icing for this cake.

I don’t know if this is statewide, but my district serves free lunch to every kid. Started early the year.
It’s still mostly inedible. Lunch ladies jobs are threatened if they use salt when they make things, they rarely get to make anything as it usually prepackaged, and everything has to be some version of “not white bread”. So...nasty grainy “whole wheat” pasta (which isn’t, really), whole wheat buns on everything, whole wheat pizza crust.....and the result is, the poor kids go to the dollar store and buy junk, and the kids with cars and money go to the gas station Subway or Burger King, or one of the three food places in town.

The few kids that do eat school lunch throw half of it away.

It’s a perfect example of what central control does to anything it touches.

 

worse than that, our schools who were doing all online, had to send checks out to anybody that was getting free lunch.

that's right, the schools paid the poor families to buy their own lunch because they are federally obligated.

There is no peak in Clown World...

 

In many jurisdictions, schools also provide free breakfasts for the "underprivileged."

 

Yeah....we do that for every kid as well. Still can’t get more than 30 out of 350 to eat anything.

 

Here the school provide three meals a day and send the kid home with chow for the weekend. ie Local schools are now a direct to welfare outlet. Many have laundry facilities.... Blows me away.

As others have noted, a good part of the Chow winds up in the trash. An utter waste of both 'food' and tax money.

 

We certainly can send lunch for our kids, but they normally like to get it hot and fresh, and we have big growing boys who are in sports.

Maybe our district is unusual, but we normally have real food offered. Even good salads to buy. The offerings remind me normally of what my grandma would make us for lunch in the summer when we would go visit her. Always good, substantial, and balanced. I've been there at lunch time!


Maybe I should be more thankful and get our lunch ladies some Christmas gifts!

 

Mich Mom,

The other side of the equation is frequently avoided.

At least here, the cafeteria foods are paid for at somewhat expensive rates. The cafeteria workers are on payrolls usualy higher than their counterpart workers. Recently our county gave ALL county workers a raise ... concurrent with the Sheriff's Office seeking charitable contributions for a new vehicle.

The other side of the equation is the funding. Residential real estate taxes are not scheduled to go down.

The overall view must be whether these public schools can handle the costs. It's debatable in this area of the fruited plain.

 

I remember my wife and I watching an episode of "The Biggest Loser" a few years ago. The trainers went to their respective schools to check out the lunches. At one point, one of the trainers pointed and asked where the vegetables were. Lunch lady pointed to the tater tots.

 

My son told me today that his school lunch ladies are having to get creative to feed the kids at school. Apparently, they can't get plates or forks from their normal vendor. They had to go to Gordon's and buy the thin paper plates.

They also said they are running into problems getting milk and other items. He said during the 3rd lunch period today, they served mashed potatoes with pizza.

I'm sure it could be partly due to them trying to use up food before Christmas break, but he said they verbalized concern about getting food after school resumes. I told him he might need to take his lunch instead of buying lunch.

Is anyone else seeing this?

It is a thing nation wide. Part of it is not being able to get food/supplies from their normal vendors. Part of it is staff issues. In some cases the cafeteria staff are being put into use as substitute teachers leaving the kitchen short staffed. In other cases they are pulling people from anywhere they can get to cover the kitchen which is short staffed.

My understanding is in most cases the kitchen staff are doing everything they possibly can to have reasonable meals for the kids and it isn't easy.

 

The school I teach at provides free breakfast and lunch for ALL students. The lunch ladies at our school work hard and are great folks, but they have no say in the food that is served, it is sent in from our county office with no input from them. They are having a ton of trouble with food and supplies not being sent right now due to supplier shortages. We have been short on or out of all kinds of things- trays, bottled water, condiments, utensils, milk, and some of the food items. The water thing wouldn't be a big deal, but all of the water fountains in the school have been deactivated since the covid crap started.

 

They turn off the water fountains at our national HQ, but provided bottled water imeadeatly, and began to replace the water fountains with water bottle refilling stations. I think we got the better part of the deal.

The run on plastic silver wear was driven in part by COvid causing an increase in demand both for on premise dining and for takeout. Plus people wanted individualy packaged utensils, or utensils set up for one at a time dispensing, No more cases of 5000 forks. Sisco says they have plenty of those.

 

The school lunches in my kids' school are pretty gross. Both kids really have no interest in that stuff. Elder takes lunch in every day, younger's schedule allows her to walk home for lunch every day. I'd much rather they eat leftovers of what I make than the crap they serve at the school.

 

A lot of the food in ours is awful too. The vegetables are actually pretty good sometimes though, I will get a serving of them myself some days if I don't have much of a lunch from home. The coleslaw, rice, beans, etc. are good. The lunch ladies at our school catch a bunch of flak about the quality of the food, but it really isn't their fault. We have 3 lunch ladies making all of the food for approximately 600 students, along with driving school buses, getting paid $9 per hour.

I do agree with the post about it being the parent's job to take care of their own children, and I don't think tax dollars should be going towards these school food programs (which are done almost exclusively with federal money) BUT I will say, there are more kids than one might think who have no food at home, and ONLY get fed at school. It's a darn shame, and those parents aren't fit to have children, but at the same time I have a lot of sympathy for those kids. I have had a lot of students over the years who deal with atrocious situations at home.

 

Yes. Creativity is in full swing in the cafeteria.

 

A teacher raised more than $100,000 to purchase enough food to keep thousands of children from going hungry over winter break | CNN

Turquoise LeJeune Parker ends every class by telling each of her students she loves them.

edition.cnn.com

Turquoise LeJeune Parker ends every class by telling each of her students she loves them.

The 34-year-old library teacher at Lakewood Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, does everything she can to prove it, and her recent fundraiser, which collected $106,000 to feed her students in need, is her most recent gesture of love.

Winter break can mean weeks of food insecurity for children and their families, Durham Public Schools spokeswoman Crystal Roberts told CNN.

"It's a basic human right. We're not talking about raising money to buy people a vacation; this is food, a very, very basic thing," Parker said. "We need to make sure we take care of our schools, because when we take care of our schools, we're taking care of our community."

Her endeavor, which she named Mrs. Parker's Professors Foodraiser, used the money she raised to purchase, pack and distribute more than 5,200 bags full of food to students at 12 schools throughout the Durham Public Schools district.

In the dozen schools the project helps, 98% of the students rely on the low-cost or free lunches provided by their school. For many children, it is their main source for food. But once the holidays come around, the schools close and so do their cafeterias.

 

School lunches are not necessary in first world countries. Is this on topic enough mods?

 

I agree they are not necessary. I also don't have a problem with there being some type of lunchroom where students can BUY lunch if they want to. That's how it was when I was in school, and it worked just fine.

 

I remember the lunches on pizza day and burger day long lines, and on spaghetti day...... someone yelled FOOD FIGHT..... and the trays flew

 

I always liked pizza day, the pizza used to be pretty good. We usually had pizza, corn, and applesauce. The pizza the kids get now is terrible.

 

This proves the old saying, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." I always paid for lunch or brought lunch when I went to school.

 

Ha ha Since Greek times, each generation has gotten lazier and more useless than the last.