| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2010 5:57 am |
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Local News 
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Edmonds School District rolls back lunch policy Kids going through the lunch line in Edmonds schools now can keep the food on their tray, even if their parents owe the district money.Superintendent Nick Brossoit decided Thursday to temporarily suspend the district's policy of replacing hot lunch with a cold cheese sandwich for students whose parents owe at least $10 in lunch fees. Cafeteria workers were being required to throw away food from students' trays if they didn't have money and their parents owed at least $10. Instead, they were given a sandwich made with cheddar cheese and whole-grain bread. On Wednesday the district started giving them milk, too. "We don't want to throw away food and we don't want to embarrass students," Brossoit said Thursday. After a story about the policy appeared in The Herald earlier this week, people began demanding change. Now the district is seeking the community's input on drafting a new lunch policy that would make parents pay their debts, but still protect children and get them fed. District administrators plan to discuss ideas Wednesday during separate meetings with cafeteria workers, school principals and parents. With the cost of food and fuel rising, the district last week began replacing hot lunch with cold sandwiches for kids whose parents owed money. The goal was to help recoup $207,763 in parent lunch fee debt carried over from last school year. School started with 2,750 students owing $10 or more. After five days of the cheese-sandwich policy, parents paid back $45,269 of the debt. Barbara Burley, a cashier at Hazelwood Elementary in Lynnwood, knows that the school can't afford to buy lunches for everyone, but she couldn't bear taking milk and fruit away from kids. Upset, she and other staff members collected donations to buy hot lunch for kids who would have otherwise received a cheese sandwich. On Thursday, she was delighted to give children an IOU and put their lunch on their parents' tab, just as she had been doing in the past. "Now I can keep my job and I don't have to humiliate a child -- and that's all I wanted," she said. Ron Martinez, president of the district's PTSA, also was glad to hear that cafeteria workers have stopped throwing away perfectly good food. "It's good that they suspended that and it's good that they're continuing to feed the kids and it's good that they're trying to get the community involved to try to find a solution," the Lynnwood father said. "I think that shows they're looking to help the kids." To eliminate some of the problems with the current policy, the district is considering placing cashiers at the head of the lunch line, to check whether students owe money, Brossoit said. The cashiers have been at the end of school lunch lines in order to meet a federal law requiring them to look over a child's meal to make sure it's nutritionally balanced. "It was never the district's intent to have the process result in students being embarrassed or having to discard food," Brossoit wrote in an open letter to the community, posted on the district Web site. "We are very sorry that this has occurred." Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com. |
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