Fourth-grader Shelby Wilkinson piled carrots on top of romaine lettuce during lunchtime Friday, and then drizzled on some ranch dressing.
The salad bar is new at Kensington Parkwood Elementary School as of April, and Shelby is one happy customer.
“Normally, there were not much choices for lunch, and now you can actually get salad — something healthy,” Shelby said.
Countywide and across the nation, students have more fruit and vegetable choices at lunch, because of changes that went into effect this year from the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.
Salad bars have been in Montgomery County schools for several years, but only recently have they been added to six elementary schools. Students on free and reduced-price meals previously had to pay the full price of a salad. They are now available under meal plans.
A student qualifies for a free or reduced-price meal if his or her family falls below a certain income level, and the federal government reimburses the school system for part of every free or reduced-price meal served. A reduced-price meal costs 40 cents. The full cost of a meal is $2.50 in elementary schools and $2.75 in middle and high schools.
The federal guidelines state that students must take a half-cup of fruit or vegetables when buying a school lunch, said Marla R. Caplon, director of food and nutrition services; if they don’t, the cafeteria staff must tell them to go back and get one.
New choices in Montgomery schools include cucumbers, spinach, beets and red and green pepper strips with hummus.
By following the rules, the school system will receive 6 cents more reimbursement per meal, Caplon said; last year, that would have totaled about $571,000.
But as lunches get healthier, they also get more expensive, and — to some — less appealing.
Some of Shelby’s classmates said the new, healthier chicken nuggets taste strange, and described the mesquite bone-in chicken as merely “a bone with soggy meat around it.”
In the cafeteria at Benjamin Banneker Middle School in Burtonsville on Monday, a group of girls they liked the bone-in chicken but struggled to name another tasty menu item.
The food is “good, but it is not as good as it used to be,” Raven Miller, an eighth-grader, said.
The extra fruit and vegetable options, and inflation, will cost the school system more. Last year each meal cost $3.53, and the school system lost about 76 cents for each free or reduced-price meal it served, Caplon said. This year, the lunches could each cost $4, depending on food costs throughout the year, and the school system could lose $1.16 for each free or reduced-price meal.
The department is funded by the school system’s enterprise fund; 55 percent of funds come from federal and state government grants, 27 percent from sales of reimbursable school meals and 17 percent come from sales of a la carte and snack items.
The change to less-processed beef and poultry last school year cost the school system 15 percent more, at $692,000; the switch to whole grains cost the school system 7 percent more, at $138,000; substituting skim milk and yogurt without high fructose corn syrup cost 10 percent more, at $350,000, according to a school system memo.
Loading...
Comments