Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home

[TheFeniX]

The only "healthy" item we had on the menu was the salad bar, although it was just iceberg lettuce and a few soggy tomatoes. I used to eat it (only $1) until one day I saw a kid 3-4 people in front of me spit in the salad bar while the cashier watched (she just shook her head). I called him out and got waved out of the line (our cafeteria staff had carte blanc to kick you out or to the back of the line for being disruptive) for my trouble.

I didn't eat cafeteria food much because the quality at my school had always been low. But I'm not paying to eat other people's bodily fluids (unless it's my restaurant choice).

Anyway, it's been years but I do believe schools get funding on a per student use of the lunch services. I have setup quite a few cafeteria systems at K-12 schools and they've been tracking student IDs with lunch purchases since I've been going to school. I can't think of any good reason to do that other than saying "This child bought lunch here, give my school more money." I know for a fact the "free lunch" program in states like Texas is used to measure state funding for certain school programs.

[TimothyC]

I just want to interject this before I go to sleep:

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

From this, it looks like the kids aren't actually paying for their food. It actually looks like the school is providing them for free, or is at least offering a discount on what the actual food costs are.

Not all lunches are free. The Free and Reduced price lunches are for low income families, and have to applied for every year. The income level to receive them is really really low - on the order of 20k a year for a family of 3.

[Broomstick]

Can I interject something here?

Last year, my Other Half and I spent some time volunteering in Chicago schools to help with their music programs (no, I didn't really mention it here, believe or not, I don't discuss everything in my life on this forum). That meant we were actually in Chicago schools, and among other things, ate lunch at the same cafeterias the kids ate at.

I wish to note two things:

1) Every goddamned school had vending machines in them. WHY? My generation managed to survive without them. If the kids can't bring lunch from home and don't eat what's served at the school they can hit the vending machines for candy bars and sugary drinks. (Soda is banned, I think - I didn't see any in the vending machines - but fruit juice can be loaded with calories) Obviously, having such vending machines would defeat the purposes outline in the OP. Maybe that particular school (which is not one I've been to) has ripped out the vending machines but damn few, if any, of the others have.

2) The cafeteria food is not wonderful but it IS edible. Really. Nothing particularly bizarre is served. The school we ate at was Steinmetz, which did have more Hispanic type food than what I encountered growing up, but since the school is something like 70% Hispanic that's hardly a wonder, is it? I had no problem finding something to eat while I was there despite having some serious food allergies myself.

I did freak everyone out one day by walking to a nearby Subway one day when we were staying late for an evening performance and needed something for dinner. My god! WALKING! Really, it didn't take that long, about four blocks, I'm flabbergasted the notion was shocking. Of course, there's nothing stopping the kids from walking four blocks to buy fast food for lunch, either - except the mental resistance to the notion of walking.

So... I don't buy the notion that the cafeteria food is that horrific, based on having actually eaten Chicago school food. Whether I approve or not of the OP's tactic... I have not yet decided. I don't like restricting choices, on the other hand, sometimes we're better off getting not what we want but what we need. With exceptions in place for medical reasons I feel I can't really condemn this. I do question, however, if the kids tossing most of their lunch have access to vending machines or not. Anyhow, eating just a few bites for lunch isn't going to kill the kids and might actually keep them healthier than kids who gorge daily. People in the US - even the poor - aren't so close to the edge of starvation that skipping a meal will kill them. Hell, I know plenty of people who choose to eat only twice or even only once a day. Sure, it may be better if they kids ate a healthy nutritious lunch but if they don't want to eat why force them?

[Versac]

I did freak everyone out one day by walking to a nearby Subway one day when we were staying late for an evening performance and needed something for dinner. My god! WALKING! Really, it didn't take that long, about four blocks, I'm flabbergasted the notion was shocking. Of course, there's nothing stopping the kids from walking four blocks to buy fast food for lunch, either - except the mental resistance to the notion of walking.

I can't speak for more developed areas, but I went through middle and high school in suburban New Jersey. Students were categorically banned from leaving campus for any reason without direct, constant supervision. Said ban was enforced by armed security, though actual firearms were pretty rare. Enforcement dropped off in higher grades, but it still wasn't unheard of for a student with no class in the last schedule block of the day to be prevented from leaving early in the car they drove in with, let alone trying to leave school grounds on foot. Leaving in the middle of day to get food elsewhere was pretty much unthinkable.

[Covenant]

Also, not many schools do ban the home meals, even though CPS principals have the authority to ban items (or all non-school items) and this is designed to operate in concert with reducing costs due to blobbidy-bloo volume purchases and encouraging kids to eat healthier stuff. It's awesome that these kids want to bring in fruit to eat, but I know a lot of the kids who need good education most don't have parents that have the time to lovingly cut their kids sammiches into spaceship shapes or buy supplies of fresh fruit. This would help the poor families more than the more comfortable ones, so if some kids get annoyed then that may have to be a consequence.

I know I brought my lunch each day and it was healthy, but my parents didn't have to work two jobs each and could afford to pack an apple and carrots in each of my lunches. We had vending machines in our school too--they're moneymakers for the schools, and so long as they're not serving caloire-filled swill aren't hurting the kids. It does seem a bit ridiculous but it's just a way to drain money from people with money to waste.

So while it's disagreeable on the surface, if you had an entire school system operating this way and giving kids healthy lunches for pretty cheap (2.25 is dirt cheap) then that'd be great. Gotta remember that income disparity has a huge impact on what you can eat, and a big part of America's problems come from portion sizes AND quality. Maybe forcing kids to adjust to a sane meal size for lunch wouldn't be so bad. I have to force myself to eat less too, but it's good for you.

[Zaune]

Quick question. Do US schools allow pupils to go home to have lunch if their parents sign the appropriate consent forms? It was fairly commonplace when I was a kid, at least if you lived within walking distance of the school.

[Covenant]

Quick question. Do US schools allow pupils to go home to have lunch if their parents sign the appropriate consent forms? It was fairly commonplace when I was a kid, at least if you lived within walking distance of the school.

Depends on the school. My parents walked home from school for lunch when they were kids, but if it was an option for me I do not know, but I suspect the school would prefer for liability reasons if children were not leaving the campus outside of times they have escorts. One snatched kid and that program goes down the crapper.

In Highschool (grades 9-12 for non-Americans) you could sign up for Off-Campus Lunch and go out to get stuff, so eventually yeah, I know it becomes common. This was generally pretty cool once someone had their Learners Permit and you could go off-campus to grab Taco Bell or something.

[Zaune]

Depends on the school. My parents walked home from school for lunch when they were kids, but if it was an option for me I do not know, but I suspect the school would prefer for liability reasons if children were not leaving the campus outside of times they have escorts. One snatched kid and that program goes down the crapper.

We actually had someone attempt to snatch a kid when I was in primary school, and there was never any suggestion of ending the policy then, nor did any parents stop doing it. (Admittedly we're talking about five to ten year-olds, who'd hardly be walking home unsupervised.) Britain has changed a lot in twenty years, hasn't it?

[Versac]

In Highschool (grades 9-12 for non-Americans) you could sign up for Off-Campus Lunch and go out to get stuff, so eventually yeah, I know it becomes common. This was generally pretty cool once someone had their Learners Permit and you could go off-campus to grab Taco Bell or something.

We had something similar, until a drunk driver killed a student on their way back. Immediately shut the whole thing down, and apparently only the student body found the logic questionable. I never heard anything about restricting brought food at the high school level; some propositions were thrown around for middle school, but I left the state before anything ever came of it.

[ArmorPierce]

Or..... it could also be true that the schools believe insitutional control is neccessary to overturn the increasing childhood obesity seen in kids.

It would actually be interesting to see if any studies suggest that such social engineering such as school lunches would provide a better outcome. Oh wait, I think there is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/200 ... centration

Perhaps from a taste point of view, could anyone tell us what the recipes involved in these school lunches involve?

Or it could really be a money grab. My university did something similar. Students dorming in non-apartment dorms were required to buy a meal plan. The one alternative option was buying "school cash" so that it worked basically a debit card and some of the local businesses accepted it (cvs, mcdonalds, wendys, sandwich shop, etc). First they started closing the loop holes, no buying gift cards at cvs, when students were doing that to get around the requirement. Then, for the good of the students, they decided to make it so that you only were able to actually only spend a small percentage of the cash outside of the school, for the good of the students. The line being used was that some students spent all their money on the card and then had no money left for food.

Aren't school lunches already part of the Chicago system as it is? A cursory reading of the article suggest that the district would have to pay even more money to the caterer for each lunch provided.

Are you referring to kickback disguised as school sponership equipment?

School lunches are sold at a profit. It is not subsidized until under a certain income level. School lunches being sold at a cafeteria is a profit motivated venture

[ArmorPierce]

Okay this isn't the first time that non-Americans had no idea what they were talking about when it came to school lunches in America and needed to shut up about on this forum

No, school lunch is not free in America. As far as I know, It's not free in any district outside of poverty level students. Otherwise, it is not subsidized and often ran at profit as it is.

I honestly didn't have a problem with the school food, but then again, I came from a family where my mother only knew how to boil meat and nothing else, so for me, a tv dinner was a huge upgrade (and something I loved actually). The school food from the multiple schools I attended had about the same quality as microwavable dinners.

[Covenant]

Okay this isn't the first time that non-Americans had no idea what they were talking about when it came to school lunches in America and needed to shut up about on this forum

No, school lunch is not free in America. As far as I know, It's not free in any district outside of poverty level students. Otherwise, it is not subsidized and often ran at profit as it is.

I honestly didn't have a problem with the school food, but then again, I came from a family where my mother only knew how to boil meat and nothing else, so for me, a tv dinner was a huge upgrade (and something I loved actually). The school food from the multiple schools I attended had about the same quality as microwavable dinners.

Well, not to be a jackass, but nothing the school does is for free anyway, since it's paid for by taxes. Due to that, my school district had a rotating schedule of free lunch days and often had milk and stuff for kids who signed up for them, but this was a wealthy district so this was 'paid for' in taxes rather than at the lunch line. It was always awesome, and parents would volunteer to come in and hand out the food. I always loved when my Mom was volunteering one of those days. Obviously this stopped at the Highschool level, but kids of that age were buying their own.

I don't disagree that they're run at a profit (and often entirely done by some kind of food provider or school caterer, which in the Chicago area could mean all kinds of sweet deals for someone) but I think it's a little less insidious than you make it sound. For reference, you can find the guidelines online at the USDA. http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/ ... s/iegs.htm

A household of 4 appears to get free lunches and milk if they have less than 29k in annual income, and reduced prices if they make less than 41k, with rates shown in monthly, weekly and bi-weekly rates as well. I'm not sure what a household of 1 would be, just a kid? Anyway.

[Broomstick]

I'm not sure what a household of 1 would be, just a kid? Anyway.

Emancipated minor?

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm not sure what a household of 1 would be, just a kid? Anyway.

Emancipated minor?

I have such a 'household' in one of my classes. He's 17, manages to get himself to school every day and somehow pay rent.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I watched 'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution' last night. He's trying to get into the LA county schools, the largest district in America.

One thing he pointed out; While board members pat themselves on the back because 'flavored milk' has increased milk consumption by over 30%, they did it by adding TWENTY EIGHT GRAMS OF SUGAR to the milk.

Its not flavored milk at that point, its a liquid candy-bar.

[Crown]

I watched 'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution' last night. He's trying to get into the LA county schools, the largest district in America.

I was actually thinking about this show as I was browsing through the replies in this thread. There was a case when he returned back to Huntington to see if his program had stuck, and there was a lot of things that were getting fucked up for various reasons, but the one that I remember was the increase in bring from home lunches. He went around and looked at what one of the primary school girl's bring home lunch consisted of; skittles.

Fuck me side wise.

And seriously, there is a lot of things that could be said about this article, but without knowing the specifics, I'm gonna go with the following assumption; the school lunch was a fine and balanced nutritional meal, the bring from home lunch was a piece of shit because the child 'didn't like' the school lunch. Tough cookies.

[someone_else]

The problem is, schools in America either cannot or WILL NOT make healthy food that tastes good.

Considering that kids don't think rationally (being kids), you either make it taste better or you beat them up until they eat your bad-tasting stuff.
The choice is really up to them.

But anyway, the food issue should be resolved with adults (their parents in this case) and by utterly nuking Mc Donalds and similar (like adding junk-food-taxes to raise their prices slowly). Forcing kids is a only short-term victory.

[Eleas]

My own relationship with the school lunch has been rocky. The general rule was that you ate what was served, although I still feel resentment over boiled liver was justified (you do not improve a child's ability to succeed in school by forcing it to eat things that literally make it gag on its own vomit). Aside from such courses, the food was usually serviceable and on occasion tasty enough for seconds.

Conversely, on a school trip to a campus in Doncaster, we were treated to their school lunch, and walked away with vaguely dazed expressions. The stuff they offered would have been unfit for a one-star all-you-could-eat buffet restaurant sponsored by Taco Bell. If any of its nutrients survived this unholy baptism of oil-searing Doom, they probably jumped ship long before we got to the cafeteria.

Moral of the story: the quality of food varies, and not just between countries.
Spoiler

What tends to be overlooked by educators is that you can't just pump nutrients into students and call it a day. All too often, I found it hard to eat in the dining hall due to the promise of waiting violence just below the surface. Particularly in high school, the ventilation was atrocious, putting students to sleep, and many subjects were taught through rote learning and a priori reasoning.

Interestingly enough, from what I've seen in the last decade of years, educators have taken notes and actually learned from this stupidity, giving me hope that the same thing won't happen to my kids.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

If schools are going to force students to eat school lunches then they damn well better be providing something as good as this if the health of the students is really their primary motivation and this isn't a power grab for the sake of profit, as understandable as that may be for many schools struggling for funding. Nevertheless, my experience with school lunches has been largely not positive. The quality of food in public schools has never been good in my experience; sometimes acceptable, but never good. As a child I was on a strict kosher diet, and often I could not find food that was acceptable, unless I just ate the little lettuce side salad and drank the milk.

In high school I don't think I ever ate school provided food. I ventured into the cafeteria on exploratory missions on at least one occasion, and nothing was tempting, even if I was short on my own food that day. I always carried fruit around with me. Would that be illegal under the new policy? Will they search student's bags and confiscate all edible items? If they're going to do that, why not just have a no junk food policy and confiscate only specific contraband items? What about students who have to stay late for extracurricular activities or other reasons? Are they forbidden to have snacks or meals after school hours, since I don't recall the cafeteria being open at all after the lunch hour? Will they be forced to choose from vending machines available? While there may be some healthful choices available in the machines, I certainly wouldn't depend on any vending machine I've ever met for adequate nutrition, especially if I'm going to be engaging in strenuous activity (I ran cross country and we stayed quite a while after school hours).

@ Broomstick: as for leaving campus to walk somewhere for lunch, to reiterate what others have said, schools are prisons. I graduated from high school eleven years ago, and already we were being treated like inmates; I imagine things have gotten worse since then. The school was built to resemble a penitentiary. It was a massive single building block made out of rough concrete block with narrow slit windows that nobody could fit through even if any of them were openable overlooking a series of closed off courtyards. (Admittedly there was one pretty side of the building facing towards the town that had decorative brickwork molded into the shape of the school crest, but as a student one did not have much opportunity to look at that side of the school). Once you entered through the outer fence, you were not allowed back out for any reason during the school day unless cleared by the office and accompanied by a designated adult, such as a parent. In any event the school was built six miles out into the desert in an area with very limited public transportation, apparently with the intention that if students did escape, there would be nowhere for them to go in a reasonable amount of time. I don't recall if metal detectors were in place while I was there, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have been installed since.

[Broomstick]

@ Broomstick: as for leaving campus to walk somewhere for lunch, to reiterate what others have said, schools are prisons. I graduated from high school eleven years ago, and already we were being treated like inmates; I imagine things have gotten worse since then.

Admittedly, high school was 30 years ago for me. Kids in the lower grades weren't allowed to leave, but by high school we were permitted to go off-campus for lunch, typically with a friend who had driving privileges. (If you have a driver's license you were allowed I think two parking permits a semester, additional if you had reason to drive - in my case, I sometimes had to take mom to doctor appointments so those days dad got me a permit - and unlimited if you were a high school kid who also had a job either as an intern or after schools for profit)

[ArmorPierce]

@ Broomstick: as for leaving campus to walk somewhere for lunch, to reiterate what others have said, schools are prisons. I graduated from high school eleven years ago, and already we were being treated like inmates; I imagine things have gotten worse since then.

Admittedly, high school was 30 years ago for me. Kids in the lower grades weren't allowed to leave, but by high school we were permitted to go off-campus for lunch, typically with a friend who had driving privileges. (If you have a driver's license you were allowed I think two parking permits a semester, additional if you had reason to drive - in my case, I sometimes had to take mom to doctor appointments so those days dad got me a permit - and unlimited if you were a high school kid who also had a job either as an intern or after schools for profit)

I've been to school in both new jersey and new york. In New York, we had staggered schedules meaning we could have one class at 8 to 8:45, then no cass till 11. We were not allowed to leave the building, and yes, the windows had fences on them. Once we were done with all the required classes for th day we could leave however, which was nice for the seniors.

In New Jersey however, even if you weren't allowed to leave school grounds if you finished all your required classes. You were forced to take additional unnecessary classes to fill up your school day schedule.

[Questor]

Policies are a bit different here in CA. When I was in high school the only thing that kept us from going off campus was the fact that the nearest restaurant was 10 minutes away and guaranteed to take at least 20 minutes to be able to serve your food, and then it would take forever to get back into the parking lot.

Every single one of those situations has been resolved with the passing of time.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Out of curiosity, in what part of California did you attend high school?

[ArmorPierce]

Yes It would help to know when you attended high school, which by the tone of your post seems to be quite a while ago. I was at university 01 to 05

[His Divine Shadow]

The only "healthy" item we had on the menu was the salad bar, although it was just iceberg lettuce and a few soggy tomatoes. I used to eat it (only $1) until one day I saw a kid 3-4 people in front of me spit in the salad bar while the cashier watched (she just shook her head). I called him out and got waved out of the line (our cafeteria staff had carte blanc to kick you out or to the back of the line for being disruptive) for my trouble.

Stuff like this was avoided at my school because there where no lines. The students would gather outside the dining hall and not enter until a teacher said they could, then everyone enters at the same time and takes their seat. We sat at designed tables, by classes and there the cafeteria workers would have prepared the food as if it was a dinner at home. Then you just served yourself, even if you didn't like what was on the menu atleast they always had milk and bread to eat.