Hartford Students Boiling Over School Lunches

“Offering nutritious & delicious meals throughout the school day is part of our ongoing Commitment to our Hartford Public School students,” so states Hartford Public Schools. However, this statement appears to be meatless, so states Hartford students. At the January 17^th Board of Education meeting, two Hartford high school students set an example for their peers by appearing before a panel of higher educated folk and telling them, “you need to work on that.”

The student speakers brought a message from their peers, thank you for lunch, “but we’d rather go hungry.” One student, who demanded a written response from the Board, stated that students are not served “quality food.” She has experienced moldy food, food which has expired, often “unhealthy” food, and served in the same portions whether the student is a kindergartener or a senior in high school; “a senior is not going to be full off of 2 chicken tenders.” The other student speaker agreed, stating, “a large majority of students do not enjoy the school lunch,” the lunches are “unappealing,” served in kindergartener portions no matter what grade you are in, and lacking in nutrition and energy for the student “in the class and on the court.” And there goes HPS’s lunch commitment, thrown away, tossed into the garbage, day after day, grade after grade.

Although these students and their peers may represent the popular Hartford student opinion on school lunches, there is no current credible research done on the subject to call it a national opinion. However, one small national survey found an ever-shrinking minority of US teens who would say that they are “somewhat unlikely” or “very unlikely” to ever eat that slop again. In 2021, 33% of teens surveyed fell into this category, but in 2022, that number had dropped to only 13%, with the “very likely” crowd increasing from 30% in 2021 to 51% in 2022 - but they just came off COVID, their hungry, anything on a plate looks good. However, as to one aspect of nutrition, Connecticut schools are failing. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in November 2022 that USDA “dietary guidelines say school age kids should eat 4-10 oz. of seafood weekly.” Looking at the districts monthly lunch menu for January, fish (“crunchy fish sticks”) will be served to Hartford students only once during the month (chicken, 7 times). The GAO report shows that Connecticut is ranked 35^th in the nation on meeting this guideline, serving less than 3 oz. of fish per week. Allergy concerns and the fact that J’s Crab Shack has closed, may play a part in Hartford’s scaling back on the fish.

The student speakers’ assessments of school lunch portions and the fact that the menu is the same across the board, will need to ripple through the corridors of justice all the way to D.C. and the USDA. The portion issue is one of carrot and stick standards. The folks we send to D.C. create standards du jour, and, while hanging billions of federal dollars over our heads, kindly ask state governments to adopt those same standards. Before COVID, the federal government would send between $16 -$19 billion annually to states to pay for school lunches. However, this only covered approximately 87% of the costs to make the lunches, so local district food service providers skimp and scam to bridge the gap. School lunches are a big, steaming business…even if the lunches are not.

Naturally, any program, such as the National School Lunch Program, coming from the federal government is going to come with standards, which in the reality of the public who must endure them, pretty dumb, like the Reagan administration calling ketchup a vegetable. Hartford Schools’ lunch programs are hamstrung by federal regulations on calorie limits, sugar limits, fat limits, and more. Schools are told to count the meals they serve, follow special guidelines for procuring the food which is served, and hiring standards for those who will do the serving! Here is one example of how regulations have affected the training of food service professionals on the correct method of portioning foods: “Any food that is in uniform pieces that can be weighed or measured to identify the number of pieces that make one serving. The portioning may be done by counting, assuming the size of the pieces are uniform – for example, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, or potato rounds.”

The food served to Hartford’s students is regulated from the cow and the crop in the ground to the cafeteria. But how many of those folks setting the standards actually go to a school and eat a lunch? Below is a chart from the USDA, which is an overview of USDA school foods programs in Connecticut.