When will Iowa City give its schoolchildren a decent lunch?

The school district has now released the outside audit it recently commissioned of district operations. The report contains all of the comments that people from the community submitted. What I found most striking was the number of comments, mostly negative, about the district’s school lunches. Many commented that the kids aren’t given enough time to eat. Many others complained about the food quality or the lunchroom atmosphere. Here are just a few of the comments:

I wish the kids had a little more time to EAT their lunch. I don’t like that kids get only one recess per day in the upper grades.

Lunches at the elementary level are HORRIBLE all the way around: * Children are not allowed enough time to eat. * The para-educators in charge of lunch run it like it’s a prison. * The “fixed somewhere else” and “warmed-up at the school” lunches are not appealing * The lunches all seem to be some variation of bread and cheese. Get rid of the behavior management system with tickets - or at least only put it in at schools with behavioral issues. It alienates good students and they think it is stupid.

Lunch time is also not adequate enough for kids to eat. I have to remind my daughter that it is not a race at the dinner table. We do a great disservice to our children by not teaching them to sit down and relax, enjoy the meal.

The students have way too little time to consume their lunches. We are teaching them to grab whatever can be “downed” quickly to be able to have something to eat at lunch.

Children need more time for lunch. They currently do not get the minimum amount recommend by the US government. Also healthier foods take longer to eat. With less than 15 minutes to actually eat, we are setting our children up to make poor eating choices and increasing the risk of obesity.

While some attention has been paid to improving the quality of the school lunches, there is little attention paid to the time children can eat their lunches. For elementary school kids, 15 minutes is not enough time. Many school kids (and parents) have indicated this in past years - and physicians and pediatricians know this. Why has the ICCSD done nothing about this?

I can not stand to be in the lunchroom during lunch at our school.

Then even the atmosphere of the lunch room was not good. They hurry the kids along to gobble their food down, without even being able to enjoy it, and then to get the kids to quiet down when it is time to dismiss for lunch, THEY RING A VERY LOUD AND ANNOYING WINDCHIME!!! That is probably one of the WORST lunch experiences I have ever had!

Lunches...too little time for k-6 to eat, even lunches from home aren’t finished because there wasn’t enough time.

More time to eat should be provided for kids instead of herding them through lunch like cattle.

I feel school lunches are a very negative time. Students are forced to be quiet and wear their coats while they eat.

I also hear from my children how they feel extremely rushed to eat and sometimes don't have enough time to eat their

School lunches are horrible!!! Everything is cunned or frozen or full of chemicals (like meat). I wouldn’t feed this to a dog.

Students must NOT be rushed through lunch.

Also, my child doesn’t get enough time to eat and the kids eat while having whistles blown in their ears. It is not a relaxing atmosphere for eating. It promotes rushing and gives my child a headache with all the shrill blows of the whistle.

I visit my kids regularly at lunch time and am appalled with the content and quality.

Lunch time was a concern for us. The past two years seemed to us like the children were being rushed out of the lunch room. . . . We were lucky if our child had 10 minutes to eat.

The school lunches are a joke, and worse, the time provided for elementary kids to eat lunch is embarrassing, dangerous, and conducive for unproductive afternoons. I realize time if finite, but food and nutrition matter. They matter to learning. . . . And really ... chocolate and strawberry milk? Why even offer that? Wouldn’t it be easier to just create a pill that causes diabetes and obesity and force them to take it?

Why do we invite the Extension office in to talk about “Pick A Better Snack” while simultaneously feeding our children preprocessed, greasy, unappetizing food for lunch?

The school lunches are awful and I will not let my children eat them.

From the report’s conclusions: “There are near universal complaints in regards to the quality of food at the elementary school level from community and school-based staff, but the Food Services department does not agree.” No mention, in its conclusions, of how short the lunch periods are (though the auditors may have seen that issue as falling outside the scope of their review).
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