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Shane Crary-Ross spent her childhood summers at farm camp, where her favorite activities were cow milking and bread baking. These days, she studies economics and social work at New York University, and spends her free time gardening, bicycling, and reading science fiction.

Last semester, while researching the National School Lunch Program, I found myself in the cafeteria of  New York City’s Munro High School,* which serves children from almost exclusively low-income backgrounds.  A school social worker there told me that more than 70 percent of the school’s students qualified for free or reduced price lunches, but as I looked around, I noticed  that almost no one was eating – a group of kids tossed a bag of Doritos around at one table, and some other students picked at French fries and pizzas at others, but they were in the minority.  A conversation with the school’s chef confirmed my observation – remarkably, in a school with about 4,000 students, he serves just a quarter of that number of meals per day.

“Why don’t people eat the school lunch?” I asked a student who was hanging out in the social worker’s adjacent office.  He delicately lifted a dry, hard French fry from his plate, raised his eyebrows, and replied, “Because that lunch is nasty.”  Unfortunately, I couldn’t disagree.  Another student told me that she had gotten food poisoning from the school lunch, and now ate only peanut butter sandwiches because, “I don’t know where the food comes from.”  At this point, the first student chimed in, “I don’t even know what it is!”

Sadly, Munro High School is not an anomaly.  In 2008, the Food Bank for New York City found that of the 63 percent of high school students entitled to free or reduced price lunches in New York, only 45 percent eat school lunch on any given day.  Nor is New York unusual in this regard; as far away as Oakland, “nasty” seems to be the word of choice (emphasized, of course, by “hella,” as things often are on the West coast) for describing school lunch.

With both child obesity and hunger on the rise, a quickly warming planet, and, conveniently, the federal law that funds school lunch programs, the Child Nutrition Act, up for reauthorization in September, there couldn’t be a better time than right now to revisit what we want to see in the nation’s school cafeterias. Organizations like Slow Food are lobbying to have the reauthorization address the intertwined public health issues of hunger and obesity in low-income communities, as well as the development of a more just and sustainable food system. 

So what would a better CNA look like? Different organizations have different priorities, but some common goals are increased funding, creating green jobs in nutrition and food service, giving schools incentives to buy local food and to teach kids about where their food comes from, eliminating junk food from schools entirely, and improving access to the school lunch program.  A more detailed discussion of these priorities follows here.

Spend more money on school lunches

Though reimbursement rates (PDF) vary by state, on average school districts receive just $2.60 for each free lunch served, and just 25¢ for each full-price lunch.  As the group California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA) points out (PDF), federal increases in reimbursement rates for school lunches lag far behind increases in food prices.  Slow Food’s Time For Lunch lobbying platform suggests that the reimbursement be raised by one dollar.

Create green jobs in school nutrition and food service

Another element of Slow Food’s platform is the creation of a School Lunch Corps, a program that would “train underemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks, and administrators our school cafeterias need.”  We need them alright – at Langdon Elementary School*, which I also visited, a staff of five prepares and serves lunch for nearly 1,000 students each day!

Encourage school districts to serve local food, educate children about food, and participate in Farm-to-School programs

This is a popular one, and dear to my heart as a sustainable food advocate.  The New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) suggests increasing reimbursements (PDF) to districts that provide healthier foods, particularly for those buying from local farmers.  Meanwhile, CFPA suggests that Congress fund pilot projects to conduct nutrition education in cafeterias. Slow Food  also advocates both local food sourcing and nutrition education through the promotion of Farm-to-School programs and school gardens.  When I mentioned the idea of Farm-to-School or a school garden to the director of operations at Langdon Elementary school, she told me that the kids would love it, but that she doubted its feasibility.  Maybe its inclusion in the school lunch reauthorization would make it seem a little more doable.

Get junk food out of schools

Sounds obvious, right? Well, you’d think so.  But you’d be surprised to find out which are considered junk food by the USDA, and even more surprised to find out which aren’t.  Plus, apart from what’s served in the cafeteria, there’s plenty of nutritionally devoid eatables available. At Munro High School, vending machines offering sugary juices and potato chips were relatively abundant, and there was a cash-only snack bar serving ice cream sandwiches and similar fare.  There’s actually a proposed law addressing this problem – the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009, which advocates like Slow Food hope will be approved this fall.

Improve access to the National School Lunch Program

Finally, troubled as the school lunch program is, it’s an important safety net for many children and families facing food insecurity.  NYCCAH and CFPA, as well as the Child Nutrition Forum (CNF) all call for increased access to the program, either by raising income thresholds for eligibility or by making school meals free to all students.  At the moment, families living at or above 185 percent of the federal poverty line must pay full price for school lunches.  For a family of four that’s $40,792.50 per year, but according to CFPA,  many of  these families face food insecurity.  CFPA advocates increasing the threshold to 200 percent of the federal poverty line, while  NYCCAH calls for universal free school lunch, noting that this would “decrease government expenditures on paperwork now used to make income eligibility determinations.”  This is actually already an option for schools in high-poverty districts, and Langdon’s director of operations told me although their school hadn’t implemented it yet, they were planning to the following year, and had calculated that it would save them a significant sum of money.

For more information on the National School Lunch Program, and the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act visit the following websites:

School Lunch Talk
The Food Research and Action Center
Slow Food’s Time for Lunch Campaign

*To respect the confidentiality of the schools I visited and the people I interviewed, I’ve changed all names and identifying details.