Cooking a nutritious breakfast and lunch for your children at home can be a task. Cooking a nutritious breakfast and lunch for hundreds of children is a monumental task, but one that Food Service Director Marla Kirkpatrick and her crews proudly take on in Parsons schools daily.
The high school crew cooks for the high school, Guthridge and Garfield. The middle school crew cooks for the middle school, Lincoln and St. Patrick’s (only for lunch, which they pay the district to provide). Parsons USD 503 returned to providing its own food service a couple of years ago, rather than contracting out for those services. Kirkpatrick said last year students either paid for lunches or received either free or reduced lunches based on income, if they turned in an application. This year the district went to the CEP (Community Eligibility Program), so all students eat for free, and no free and reduced lunch application was necessary.
It has always been known there are student’s whose families would qualify for free and reduced lunches, but the parents do not apply. The district has provided assistance to parents with filling out the applications, if needed, but still, some would not apply. It is believed that is in part due to stigmas associated with receiving the free and reduced meals. The district also implemented a system in the lunchroom, so there was no means of identifying which students were receiving free and reduced lunches, but still, numbers did not increase. However, with all students eating free this year there has been a shift and the number of students eating lunches has risen dramatically.
“I think it is just because folks that have kids in school probably couldn’t afford to pay for their meals, and now all kids eat free,” Kirkpatrick said.
Numbers of students eating school lunches are up at all schools across the district, but they have doubled at Parsons High School.
“The other day we served 197 for lunch at the high school,” Kirkpatrick said. “We were doing good to serve 100 last year.”
Some of those additions are because of the increased size of the incoming freshman class. Some are sophomores who returned to closed lunches this year. Some are simply students taking advantage pf the free meals now. Juniors and seniors still have open lunches, she said. Next year the numbers are likely to rise again, as lunches will be closed for juniors, too.
The district has received a lot of compliments from students, staff and parents about the quality of the lunches and variety.
Kirkpatrick said the school has a wide variety of vendors that they use that bring in food.
“It all depends on what food comes in and how it Is prepared,” Kirkpatrick said. “I was over at Guthridge this morning and they just raved how everything was and we fed a lot of kids.”
At the high school, students have a hot lunch option or a cold option and then they have a salad. For those interested there is also the ala carte table, that serves all those kinds of snack items that are not reimbursable, like chips, cookies, fruit roll ups, and Gatorade, which are not on the healthy lunch menu, so do have an added cost.
This year they moved a few menu items from being a second option to a first option because of their popularity. But, other than that, nothing has really changed from last year.
Their lunch menu works on a six-week cycle, so at the end of six weeks, they go back to serving what they served on week one Before they do, they pull the numbers from the first six weeks to see what students liked and what they didn’t.
“The high school kids will tell us. Then I can get in there and change it, a long as what we serve satisfies the state. Everything has to be a reimbursable meal, which means they have to have so many grains, so many fruits, so many vegetables, and protein and dairy.
“We tell them to go back and grab something. If they don't, at the registers we have apples and oranges and we will tell them to grab one of those. If they don’t want it, they can put it on the Share Table,” Kirkpatrick said. “The Share Table is when kids take things they think they may want, or maybe they don’t want, but they take it. As long as it is not opened, or peeled, like an apple or orange, they can put it on the Share Table, and then the kids who are still hungry can go up and get it. There’s milk, juice, unopened packages of muffins and strudels and things like that. Most of the time the kids are watching, especially at breakfast. If someone puts a milk up there, it’s gone.
"It’s cool. I had never heard of it until I got here," she said.
Parents and grandparents are always welcome to come eat with their students. The cost for adults is $4.75. They just need to check in with the secretaries at the middle school or high school in the morning.
“We encourage all of that,” Kirkpatrick said. “I would love to see parents and grandparents come in.”