Ask a Morgan Hill elementary school student what their favorite
school lunch is, and they can typically tell you without
hesitation
– and what day of the week it’s served on, too.
Ask a Morgan Hill elementary school student what their favorite school lunch is, and they can typically tell you without hesitation – and what day of the week it’s served on, too.
Ask them what their least favorite is, and it’s the same scenario.
But this year, the answers are a bit more muddled. That’s because on any given day students have three entrees to choose from, thanks to changes implemented by Scott McMillan, Morgan Hill Unified School District’s director of student nutrition.
“It helps give variety to the students,” he said.
Patrick O’Neill and Trent Keen, both 9, argue over which day of the week favorites like tacos and pizza are served.
For the record: during February, tacos are served Thursdays, along with a chicken sandwich or macaroni and cheese. Pizza is served on Tuesdays; the other offerings that day are a grilled cheese sandwich and a chili dog. Pizza is again served Friday, with a tuna sandwich or chicken corn dog its competitors.
They’re not the healthiest meals, McMillan acknowledges, but it’s stuff children will eat and meets the federal standard for school lunches. For example, no more than 30 percent of the calories in an entree can be from fat, and no more than 10 percent can be saturated fat.
The sense of empowerment at letting students choose their own meal has paid off, too, he said.
“If they take it, they eat it, because they take what they want,” McMillan said.
Wes Stinson, a 17-year veteran custodian currently working at Nordstrom, said he’d noticed a difference too: a lot of days the trash cans are lighter, he said.
“You can tell just by that,” Stinson said.
Still, some students are convinced that the changes are just more quantity, same poor quality.
A gaggle of giggling sixth grade girls sat together at lunchtime Friday in Burnett’s cafeteria. Some ate school lunch, some ate Valentine’s Day candy, some ate nothing.
The girls agree, for the most part, that the lunches are unpalatable. Even the more popular choices, like pizza, get a pass.
Sixth grader Carina Ramirez scored a pizza Friday, but it sat unopened. She was more interested in the Valentine’s Day candy she’d gotten from a class party.
The girls agreed that the nachos, a Monday option, were the best lunch available through school.
For McMillan, the students’ fickle tastes are a numbers game. For example, if 100 students are going to eat, he might order 60 of one entree, and then 20
each of the other two options, he said.
Days like Wednesday, there’s a clear favorite. Nordstrom Elementary School third grader and lunch helper Kelsy Pike, 8, was busy Wednesday with the chicken nugget station: rack after rack of lunches were snatched up by eager students. She’d set aside a chicken nugget lunch, with tater tots, for herself early on.
“I like to mash them up,” Pike said of the tots. Usually, she gets a fruit, too.
In addition to the entrees, there are three fruit and vegetable options each day, from which the students can pick two.
“As long as the kids are taking the choices, as long as they eat a well-balanced meal, then it’s giving them the nutrition they need,” McMillan said.
On Wednesday at Nordstrom, broccoli was on display between the milk options (low-fat or no-fat chocolate) and a strawberry Jell-O cup and bananas. Student after student passed up the broccoli for the strawberries or bananas, or skipped produce altogether. But the few students who chose the broccoli loved the broccoli.
“I heart broccoli,” Shae Urbina, 7, said, making a heart shape with her two small hands. “I like broccoli because it gives me a lot of vitamins and helps me stay healthy.”
Urbina said she had observed more students in her class excited about lunch than before.
“Because, whenever they ask kids to raise their hands for hot lunch, a lot raise their hands and are excited.”
