No lunch for Nordstrom kindergartners

The only thing 5-year-old Bradley Hoffman doesn’t eat? Cooked
spinach
– and lunch at Nordstrom Elementary School. Though skipping his
once-largest-meal-of-the-day isn’t Bradley’s preference. He loves
to eat and his parents Wess and Kristina Hoffman say they are a
”
mealtime family.
”
The afternoon kindergarten class that the Hoffman’s first-born
attends at Nordstrom Elementary has no scheduled lunch time, just a
5-minute snack time inserted during the daily 15-minute recess.
The only thing 5-year-old Bradley Hoffman doesn’t eat? Cooked spinach – and lunch at Nordstrom Elementary School.

Though skipping his once-largest-meal-of-the-day isn’t Bradley’s preference. He loves to eat and his parents Wess and Kristina Hoffman say they are a “mealtime family.” The afternoon kindergarten class that the Hoffman’s first-born attends at Nordstrom Elementary has no scheduled lunch time, just a 5-minute snack time inserted during the daily 15-minute recess. 

It’s the only class in Morgan Hill Unified School District that does not have a scheduled lunch period for students. The Hoffmans want answers. 

Wess is noticeably agitated at the situation. He was one of the parents who waited overnight in a line outside Nordstrom to get his son into the impacted school that boasts some of the highest test scores in the district. It happens nearly every spring at Nordstrom.

“I didn’t spend the night in a parking lot to get my child into a public school and then deal with the grief that he’s not allowed to eat lunch,” Wess said. “I’m not seeing why I wasn’t made aware of this. Why did I spend the night?”

The Hoffmans said they were not told the class had no lunch time and couldn’t get a straight answer as to why her son was going hungry between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. every day. 

“(Principal Kathy Yeager) said ‘it’s always been this way,’ ” Kristina said. “Well, that’s not an answer.” She wasn’t satisfied with the unreturned phone calls by Yeager and half-answers, so Hoffman went to the Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Socorro Shiels, who directed her to the head of food services for the district Scott McMillian.

McMillian said he only makes sure children are eating at school, Kristina said. And she wasn’t concerned about the school feeding Bradley, but whether there was time for him to eat a full lunch, either at school, home or daycare.

It seemed a miscommunication occurred within several e-mails, and not until 10 weeks after Kristina first reached out to the district office to get an answer, did Shiels respond with a possible resolution.

“The kindergarten schedules across the district continues to be a topic of discussion for next year and your concerns have been shared with (Superintendent Wes Smith’s) cabinet. Any decisions will go through the site principal and will be discussed with the school communities in the spring. Thank you again,” Shiels wrote to Hoffman Nov. 15. Hoffman’s first attempt to understand why the schedule left out lunch was in August.  

Principal Yeager did offer to switch Bradley to the morning class, but the Hoffmans said he had already made friends and was comfortable with his teachers by then.

“I didn’t want to interrupt his first year of school even more,” Kristina said.

At MHUSD’s eight elementary schools, three have all-day kindergarten with a lunchtime at the same hour as the other primary-age students. At the five other elementary schools with morning and afternoon kindergarten, lunchtime is either before school around noon or scheduled during the school day. Nordstrom is the only afternoon kindergarten that sways from the norm.

All-day kindergarten could be the direction Nordstrom heads for next fall, Shiels said. Though Shiels did not return requests for an interview.

Instead, kindergartners are given a daily 15-minute recess with 5 minutes allotted for snack time. There is a catch. Students may only snack if a snack is brought for every child in the class. No child goes hungry, because Hoffman and other parents make sure there’s always food, and therefore the rest of the class.

“My goal is to have the afternoon kindergarten class time changed for next year and years after. I think it is absurd to displace and teach 4-, 5-, 6-year-olds to no longer eat meals when the class could simply be started 45 minutes later in the afternoon like other schools do,” Hoffman said.

Some Nordstrom parents have tried to get around the 5-minute snack rule by including extra food such as breakfast bars in their children’s backpacks in case they get hunger pains.

At least one Nordstrom mother, who didn’t want to be identified, said the no-lunch issue wasn’t actually an issue for her.

Her son eats a large snack before school and after – dinner got pushed back a little later, and so did bedtime.

“It’s not really been a problem for us. He got settled into it fairly quickly,” she said last week after dropping her son off.

“We’ve been very happy with the afternoon kindergarten class, the teachers, the school. The no lunch has been no problem for us honestly,” she said.

The ease from normal morning parking hassles have been squashed to, she said, “It’s been a fine first year of school for him.”

The no-lunch schedule did have parents talking at an informational night before school started. Kristina said other parents have been aggravated about the unhealthy choices other parents have donated. Hoffman only brings healthy snacks like cheese, crackers or fruit.

Ice-cream? Cookies? Not exactly good fuel for a developing body and mind said Pediatrician Dr. Mazhard Khan.

“Their bodies need the healthy nutrients. Little children should get their meals and snacks. The standard should be noon. That’s a pretty good time to have a lunch break. If they eat, they can concentrate on what they’re doing at school,” said Dr. Khan, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatricians. Otherwise, children get fussy and irritable, he added.

Dr. Khan said it’s not ideal for children to snack all day or “graze.” Children should eat three meals with a mid-morning snack and second snack between lunch and dinner, he said.

Children in the Nordstrom afternoon kindergarten class must eat lunch before class – about 10:30 a.m. – or afterward – about 3 p.m., which puts the window for lunch too close to breakfast or dinner and students’ normal eating schedules are being forced to change at home. It seems especially haphazard since next year as first-graders, the children will have a regular lunchtime about noon.

“Other parents say, ‘well you have the summer to adjust to eating lunch again,'” Kristina said bewildered by the suggestion. “It was horrifying, because the first three weeks, Bradley’s stomach was upset. He was sick all the time. It took time to adjust. He would get really hungry and have stomach pains from the acid (buildup),” she said.

Now, Bradley is doing well. He drinks a glass of milk before bed in-between playing Candy Land or wrestling with Wess.

The Hoffmans say they love living in Morgan Hill and are planning to live here long-term, but they want the schedule to change by the time their 10-month-old daughter Grace is ready for kindergarten.

“I want to get it out to parents, so they know before it’s too late and they’re in the class like Bradley. We were just floored. The kids come first, I thought. Our children shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Kristina said.