School Lunch Committee Status/Summary Report

Why formed:

A committee was formed to review our current school lunch program, as our district is ready to go out to bid to foodservice providers. The bid process was seen as an opportunity to look at and revamp our current menu offerings and operations, especially in light of the reconstruction at Parkdale (which will include a revised kitchen). In doing so, we looked to the parents’ and students’ direct input for their opinions of the current school lunch and its menu offerings via a survey. The survey results would help our committee find ways to improve the offerings and therefore increase participation (currently our participation rate is roughly 30%). All menu revisions had to keep in mind the current cost/meal and the free government commodities, which are provided and bound by a Federal nutritional standard within the NSMP (Nutrient Standard Menu Plan). As we are participants in the National School Lunch Program, we must keep adhere to strict standards. We want to increase participation in order to increase our reimbursement of free/reduced lunches within the program. The committee researched all of the above to fully understand the nature of the programs.

Actions:

As we wanted to take a step back and get feedback from the parents and students of the current program, we researched surveys from other schools and cherry-picked from them what met the needs of our district to create a survey to meet our needs.

Surveys were created and sent out to all students in November. Surveys consisted of 12 questions, plus we asked for input on every current menu item from the past year. We currently offer 77 different entrée items alone. We asked the participants whether they flat out liked the food item, didn’t like it or if they normally like it, but don’t like the way it is prepared (i.e., hot dogs, pizza).

900 surveys were returned (a 50% return rate). Surveys were separated by school and tabulated.

Results established our next steps. Q #16 asked for comments and there were many written after completing a rather long survey (which tells us that parents and students care about this issue.) The resulting highlights of the survey indicated that students/parents would like:

  1. more fresh fruits and vegetables served
  2. soup, salad and sandwich bar
  3. shorter lunch line
  4. healthier food options
  5. a streamlined menu

These results were consistent across all 4 schools. At the same time, the MS student council presented to our committee with an appeal to consider adding a salad bar. This reinforced the results of the survey.

We, therefore, took on the task of narrowing choices of all menu items to develop a streamlined monthly menu that can be repeated. We used the favorite food item choices and implemented the top written comments from the survey (i.e. healthier options) and took into consideration the generous use of government commodities. This would serve as the sample menu that we will use to go out to bid.

We also did some other legwork in order to submit the resulting lunch menu and to better understand operations:

  • We went to all cafeterias to observe current lunch and their processes.
  • We went to Clarence to witness their operations.
  • We pulled in Alice Williams (a chef at Wegman’s) to look at refining current recipes and provide recipes for new items.

As a result, we revised the sample menu into two menus: one for PKD and one for the MS and HS. Each menu has a 21-day cycle, to be repeated monthly. The revised menus will hopefully better address our participation rate (or even boost it), for example, by offering pizza daily at the MS and HS as an alternate entrée and offering it weekly at PKD, yet still maintain the healthy, fresh aspects of the menu with more fresh vegetable and fruit offerings. We will go out to bid with this menu. We would also like to see some additional changes occur, based on what we observed at Clarence, to include:

  • A highly visual and appealing display of the lunch items being offered.
  • Streamlined lunch lines.
  • Provide daily classroom lunch counts and stick to what’s ordered in the morning (to counter long lines, streamline lunch preparation).
  • Use of swipe cards (which provides the convenience of on-line payment, allows parents to see what their kids are really buying at lunch, provides anonymity for children receiving free- and reduced-lunches, and makes the lunch lines move faster (especially at PKD)).
  • Use butter and salt on veggies and noodles, by tweaking other areas in the weekly NutraKids nutrition guidelines.

Next steps:

Finalize menu.

Go to bid.

Make adjustments for line speed.

Create visual displays.

Tweak some prep of food items.

Nutrition committee?

Educate staff.

Hold taste tests.