School Lunches: What you didn’t know!

Licking Valley High School, Hanover

Here at Licking Valley, students bank on having a healthy but yet filling lunch that will allow us to get through a day without being hungry and spending too much money.

So we sent out a poll to every student in Licking Valley High School to see what they thought about our lunch. Out of 183 responses, the majority of the answers mentioned not having enough (helps fund) schools’ food service programs, but because they give us money to offset the costs of feeding the students we have to play by their rules.”

This is why we can only have certain types of food, such as whole grain, and reduced fat foods. He went on saying, “They have very strict guidelines for the types and quantities of food we serve, and they also have guidelines for how much we charge students. In fact, a few years ago they told us our lunch prices were too low and made us increase them even though we didn’t feel we needed to do so. We try to keep the prices as low as possible but high enough to cover our costs for providing the meals.” So when we are provided lunches they have to be certain prices, and the school decides what they will be but the federal food in one serving. To be precise, 83.6% say we don’t get enough which leaves the remaining 16.4% saying they think it is fair.

According to the National School Lunch Program, regulations suggest that students understand the healthy environment while being served enough to enjoy their meal. The answers received in our survey showed that most of the students do believe that we are served a variety of foods. When discussing the price of our lunches and how we put money where we do, Dr. Hile, our Superintendent, answered a few of our questions.

Dr. Hile Interview

We had been hearing a lot of talk about the school lunches government ultimately decides how low they can really be. While it might be expensive for some, we still have to pay for the employees work and for the equipment that is used to make all of the food. Like Dr. Hile said, “The food service program also has to be self-sufficient. In other words, it’s like a separate business within the school. It has to make enough money from the federal subsidies and what the students and staff pay for their lunches to pay all of the cafeteria employees and buy all of the food and equipment.”

We also asked him how people packing their lunch affected the price of lunches and how, and he said that it doesn’t really affect the price that much. “Students packing their lunches hurts the food service program a little bit because they are not buying lunches, so we are not getting their business, and if they are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch we do not get the and people saying how they are still hungry after lunch. This project came up and we found it to be the solution to these questions we had been hearing. We didn’t know much about what went into making a school lunch or the cost of buying all of the ingredients, so we asked Dr. Hile. He responded very quickly with very quality answers. “These questions actually have very complicated answers. School food service programs are part of the National School Lunch Program in which the federal government subsidizes federal reimbursement for them. But usually there are not enough packers that it hurts our business too much.”

In conclusion, there isn’t much that we have control over when it comes to picking the lunches. Our Superintendent gets to pick from options from the National School Lunch Program, and that is what we get at lunch. There is a budget that he has to follow as well, when deciding what lunches he wants for our school.