Chicago school bans homemade lunches, the latest in national food fight

[walerosco]

Students who attend Chicago's Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food--or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke."

But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. "They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. "It's really lame."

The story has attracted hundreds of comments so far. One commenter, who says her children attend a different Chicago public school, writes, "I can accept if they want to ban soda, but to tell me I can't send a lunch with my child. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????"


For parents whose kids do not qualify for free or reduced price school lunches, the $2.25 daily cafeteria price can also tally more than a homemade lunch. "We don't spend anywhere close to that on my son's daily intake of a sandwich (lovingly cut into the shape of a Star Wars ship), Goldfish crackers and milk," Northwestern education policy professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach told the paper in an email. She told The Lookout parents at her child's public school would be upset if they tried to ban homemade lunches.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110411/us_yblog_thelookout/chicago-school-bans-homemade-lunches-the-latest-in-national-food-fight

[peace13]

1. I know more than one person who got Hepatitis from the lunch 'lady'..

Maybe I don't want dirty hands on my kids food. Go figure!

[BrightKnight]

11. Children are vaccinated against Hepatitis and

School cafeteria workers should be required to have all vaccinations.

[peace13]

21. Should and are, are two different things. It doesn't change the facts!

If a parent wants to feed it's child then who the heck has the right to deny that. If someone wants to force feed my child then I hope they show up to pay the college tuition and insurance bills as well. Offer the option. I am totally opposed to force feeding the children! So the school knows better how to feed the kids...what next, I ask. Hope you will be so willing to give up that parental right as well. Sooner or later one will come up that bothers you and then it will all be different. Trust me.

[Demeter]

2. Is it fascism yet?

shakes head sadly

Those muttonheads are the reason why so many other teachers are getting screwed over.

[Wait Wut]

3. Banning is over the top, but I agree with the basic concept.

Right there in the article the woman states she sends a sandwich, goldfish crackers and milk. It doesn't say what type of bread she's using, or what type of meat and condiments, but the goldfish crackers and milk aren't the best choices for a child's lunch on an everyday basis. I can guarantee that many kids get worse.

My son didn't have an option when he was little. They didn't have a cafeteria. I personally HATE bread, so would never make him sandwiches. Soup, salads and leftovers were normal. He insisted on apples, because bananas wouldn't survive the trip to school.

$2.25 for a lunch isn't that expensive, and if you can't afford it I would have to assume that free/reduced fees would be available. But...it's still a lot to ask for parents to shell out the cash every week. Not only that, but if this took hold in a red state you better believe the teapers would be whining about "entitlements" with the free lunches.

Too many pros/cons for me to make a final judgment, but I'm leaning towards this being a good idea that needs a lot of work.

[whathehell]

6. I agree with Demeter....The school has no right, IMO, to "over rule" the parents.

They can and should "advise" them, but to essentially

take away their right to feed their own kids is ridiculous.

[Wait Wut]

8. I sort of agree.

But, too many kids parents really don't give a damn what their kids eat, if they eat at all. I get the feeling those are the parents that this is aimed towards, but you can't separate those parents/kids out.

There's gotta be some type of compromise. I just can't think of one. I just hate seeing kids go hungry or being given a candy bar and a bag of chips for lunch. Their ability to learn is affected, their attitude and social behavior are affected. But, punishing the "decent" parents is not the way to fix the issue.

I know how well crappy parents take to "advise" first hand. It doesn't work. If a parent doesn't care about their child "advice" isn't going to be the magic weapon. Children's services can only do so much and are ridiculously overworked. This is an obviously desperate measure by the schools to get these kids at least one healthy meal a day.

Again, I'm not 100% on board with this. It's still punishing those that have done the best they can.

[southernyankeebelle]

4. Who is getting a kick back?

[arcane1]

5. Indeed, somewhere there is a brother-in-law cashing in

There is ALWAYS a brother-in-law*

*meaning a generic term for someone well-connected who profits :)

[Cobalt-60]

10. precisely

this is a way of forcing sales in the cafeteria.
A nice way to force a nasty public confrontation would be for the parents with the capacity to en masse bring lunch to the kids.
They'll never identify the bodies of anyone that tries to get in the way.
Can you imagine the excuses ? "Its impossible for you to see your child. We're trying to force feed them HFCS in our feed lot cafeteria.

[Coyote_Bandit]

7. The school simply does not have the legal authority

to determine what someone else's child does or does not eat. Diet is often impacted by cultural, ethnic and religious beliefs. Some choose vegetarian or vegan diets for health reasons.

This is not about feeding children healthy foods. It is about money and revenue streams. School cafeterias have labor and overhead expenses - which are now being shared by a larger group of students. Certainly that is better for the school - but not necessarily for the kids or their families.

I'd be noncompliant and send my kid with a healthy homemade lunch - with contents documented. And if the assholes dared to refuse my kid permission to eat it then I'd be pursuing the legal options available to me.

Perhaps somebody should introduce these asshats to the vegan lunch box:
http://www.veganlunchbox.com/

[pschoeb]

9. The end benefactor is Compass Group PLC

It's the world largest food service provider, and can easily buy whatever "representative" government it needs.

Their subsidiary Chartwells-Thompson handles the food for CPS

[truedelphi]

12. Thanks for the information. n/t

[somone]

17. And there we have it

[struggle4progress]

13. Pretty sure the folk in Chicago can sort all this out without our help

[christx30]

14. There is

nothing wrong with having an opinion. And it will take nothing less than a national outcry to stop this kind of Nanny State crap from spreading like a damn cancer to other schools. My son takes his lunch to school every day. His school tries this crap, and he is out of there.

[struggle4progress]

16. School boards arev typically responsive to local opinion, and policies like this don't survive

unless there's substantial public support. This policy has been in place at this particular school for something like six years now, so parents must generally support it: it will disappear quickly if parents decide they don't like it

[christx30]

18. So what happens

when some crazy parent think they know what's best for their kid and insists on sending a bag lunch to school? Is the lunch confiscated? Does social services get involved?

[struggle4progress]

19. I'm pretty sure the folk in Chicago can sort everything out without our help. I'm also pretty sure

that the folk in Chicago can sort everything out without the help of all the rightwing noisemakers who are jumping on this particular bandwagon. The policy has been in effect about six years, so I should guess parents generally support the policy, and I expect it would disappear quickly if parents actively begin to oppose it. I need have no opinion myself about whether the policy is (or is not) generally appropriate for the particular school: I think that is a fundamentally local question; but even if considered as an abstract policy question, the answer might depend on local conditions. I suspect hardly anyone expressing an opinion here really knows much about the local community or local issues facing the school; I certainly expect the rightwing outlets (like Drudge and the Washington Times), that are now shrieking about this story, are motivated by something other than concern for the students

Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home
By Monica Eng and Joel Hood, Tribune reporters
April 11, 2011, 1:42 a.m.
... Principal Elsa Carmona said ... she created the policy six years ago ... http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410,0,5869022.story?page=2

... As of 2009-2010, there were 733 students enrolled at LITTLE VILLAGE. 99.9% were low income Students ... 38.6% were Limited English Learners ... As of 2009-2010, the largest demographic at LITTLE VILLAGE was Hispanic. As of that time, this demographic made up 99.6% of the student population ... http://www.cps.edu/Schools/Pages/school.aspx?unit=2590

[christx30]

22. But it is still

ok to have an opinion! and to ask questions! So, again, I ask what happens when a student brings his or her lunch to school?

[struggle4progress]

23. So write a nice letter to the Chicago Schools: they probably have a public information officer

who will send you a copy of the Little Village Academy's policy

Be sure to share your thoughts with them about how they could do better: I expect folk in Illinois will be just as excited to hear opinions from Texas about how things ought to be done in Illinois, as folk in Texas would be to hear opinions from Illinois about how things ought to be done in Texas. They can't have served more than about 125000 student lunches a year for the last six years under this policy, so they'll no doubt welcome your expert input

Or drive up and argue with them about their policy face to face: it's only about a thousand miles, and you could easily do that in two days

[walerosco]

15. tell that to the people of WI

[struggle4progress]

20. The last time I was there, Chicago wasn't in Wisconsin

[GillesDeleuze]

24. CALLING JAMIE OLIVER NT

[saras]

25. A key word in the article was "some"

"At Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side, officials allow packed lunches but confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt. (They often are returned after school.) Principal Rebecca Stinson said that though students may not like it, she has yet to hear a parent complain."

"At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad."

"Carmona said she created the policy six years ago after watching students bring "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" on field trips for their lunch."

Personally, what I think it demonstrates is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution that works perfectly, whether it be the school deciding, the parent deciding, or the kids themselves deciding. They need to make that work, with the real kids, parents, and food the schools have to work with, rather than appealing to purist intellectual principles like absolute freedom.

As long as the parents, or the children, or both, can appeal with a simple, straightforward, real-time "this is as good or better than that", and eat a better lunch if they want, I don't see any reason schools ought not to provide nutritious meals (of course they should taste good too, but I suspect the solution there is localist and therefore unsystematic) for anyone who doesn't have one, and require students to not eat junk food at school.

But if you send your kid a nice deli sandwich with vegetables and dressing in separate packets, a half mango, a hardboiled egg, carrots, celery, and peanut butter, a thermos of milk and a homemade peppermint, they ought to be able to eat it. Under candlelight.

[noel711]

26. Too little information in the story to make a judgement-

It sounds reprehensible, but...

When I was a kid growing up on Chicago's south side,
there was no lunch served at school;
most of us walked home for lunch and walked back to school
for the afternoon classes.

Those who had to bring a lunch had a seat at the picnic tables
in the school basement.

When I was an elementary school teacher during the
70's and 80's, I was appalled at what passed as a lunch
carried by my students: a few things thrown in a bag:
3 doughnuts, bags of chips, cans of soda.

I realized that small children were making their own
lunches. There was little adult supervision or thought
as to what went to school. And there were other things
that showed up in lunch bags, items of curiosity to
children that would draw attention in the lunchroom:
condoms, certain magazines, cigarette lighters,
Uncle Bubba's racy tee shirts. Again: little adult
supervision.

I applaud efforts of school districts to provide healthy
alternatives, but having to deny home packed lunches
is a desperate attempt at controlling what is appropriate
for small children. No easy answers without knowing all
the facts behind the decision.

[alarimer]

27. School lunches pretty much sucked when I was in school.

And I think they are still loaded with too much fat and sugar: pizza, chicken fingers, etc.

[MasonJar]

28. Now a mother cannot decide what her son or daughter should eat.

I have seen twenty years of school lunches. They are garbage. A nice sandwich, apple and cookie from home is far superior. Besides by the time students get through the line, they don't have time to eat.