{"id":1316233,"date":"2019-10-29T17:51:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T23:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=990270"},"modified":"2019-10-30T09:25:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T15:25:55","slug":"roaring-fork-schools-looking-for-solutions-to-make-food-services-more-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/roaring-fork-schools-looking-for-solutions-to-make-food-services-more-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"Roaring Fork Schools looking for solutions to make food services more sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
A mob of Glenwood Springs High School students make their way over the City Market during the lunch hour on Tuesday morning.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Eating school lunch is a practical matter for Glenwood Springs High School junior Grace Hall.<\/p>\n

She has a job and pays for her own gas and upkeep on a car. <\/p>\n

And, she admits her parents have agreed to pay the relatively nominal fee for her to stay on campus and eat in the school cafeteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of look at it as, would I rather go out to eat five times a week and spend that money? Or, do I have my lunch paid for and spend my money on better things,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n

Fellow senior Karla Trejo agrees. But that doesn\u2019t mean there couldn\u2019t be some improvements in the school lunch offerings, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school food is pretty good, but they could definitely change up some things and make them better,\u201d Trejo said. \u201cI do think that they\u2019re decent for people who don\u2019t have the opportunity to go buy food, or don\u2019t have time to make themselves food.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Hall and Trejo are in the very small minority among the nearly 1,000 students who attend Glenwood High.<\/p>\n

According to Roaring Fork School District Food Services Director Michelle Hammond, only about 40 students per day participate in either the breakfast or lunch program at the school.<\/p>\n

In September, the district suspended the breakfast program at Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale and at Basalt High School due to a combination of low participation and difficulty filling food service jobs.<\/p>\n

Come lunch time in Glenwood, most high school students are piling into cars to go grab lunch at one of the local fast-food restaurants, or filing across Grand Avenue in droves to pick up something quick at the City Market grocery store.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better food \u2026 you can choose whatever you want,\u201d said sophomore Sophia Mohl as she made the midday trek.<\/p>\n

Senior Hunter Behnke returned from his City Market visit with a bag of Doritos and a Lunchables pack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just like the grocery store food better,\u201d he said. \u201cThe school lunch just seems fake \u2014 the texture, the taste \u2014 when you eat it, you\u2019re just kind of settling for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Student Anna Lara said the walk to and from the store also provides a good break, \u201cso I don\u2019t have to be stuck inside school all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seniors Ashland Stolley and Grant Weimer each picked up a southwestern chicken bowl \u2014 and a bag of doughnuts for Weimer to take home later.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be entirely honest, it\u2019s cheap, and it\u2019s quick and easy to walk across the street and come back,\u201d Stolley said. \u201cMost days, we do go out and drive to other places, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Weimer, \u201cI used to do hot lunches in elementary school \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI always felt like it was kind of low-quality, like they just threw it in the microwave for 20 seconds or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

While participation in the school lunch program remains reasonably high at the elementary and middle school levels, the school district has been wrestling with how to make the district\u2019s food services programs as a whole more sustainable.<\/p>\n

Of 5,589 students in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale and Basalt district schools, approximately 1,800 lunches and 600 breakfasts are served each day.<\/p>\n

Many of those meals are provided at reduced rates or free, as 43% of students in the district qualify for free or reduced lunch under the National School Lunch Program.<\/p>\n

Since passage of the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act nearly a decade ago, the cost to keep up with all the nutritional and health rules and regulations have ballooned.<\/p>\n

The program is now subsidized out of the district\u2019s general fund to the tune of $220,000 a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are funds that previously would have benefitted district instructional programs,\u201d according to a staff report to the Roaring Fork School board for its Oct. 23 meeting.<\/p>\n

Rules prevent school lunches from differentiating between the nutritional needs of high school students versus elementary students, for instance. <\/p>\n

And, the portions are \u201cincredibly specific,\u201d the memo noted \u2014 each meal is required to contain a cup of milk, a half cup of fruit, three-quarters of a cup of vegetables, 1 ounce of grains and 1 ounce of meat or a meat alternative.<\/p>\n

Each meal must also contain less than 1,230 milligrams of sodium.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters is the labor situation that contributed to the two breakfast programs being suspended.<\/p>\n

The district has 30 food-service workers when fully staffed. As of mid-October, however, the program was down four part-time and two full-time employees, according to the district.<\/p>\n

At a starting wage of $14.30 an hour for cooks and $16.86\/hour for managers, and with most positions offering only a part-time schedule, filling the positions has been difficult, Stein said.<\/p>\n

The district has tried to combine available part-time jobs \u2014 for instance food service, bus drivers, building custodians and groundskeepers \u2014 into full-time positions, in an effort to make them more attractive and retain workers. But that has had limited success, said Shannon Pelland, chief financial officer for the school district.<\/p>\n

On the legislative side, the district may also step up its lobbying efforts to try to lessen the regulatory burden and work around some of the obstacles, Stein said. <\/p>\n

Beyond that, \u201cit\u2019s about how creative we can get as a team to approach this,\u201d he said. \u201cThat creativity is going to have to come by increasing participation in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school board and district administration expect to continue the conversation about how to make food services more cost-effective as the yearly budget talks begin after the first of the year.<\/p>\n

jstroud@postindependent.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A mob of Glenwood Springs High School students make their way over the City Market during the lunch hour on Tuesday morning.Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent Eating school lunch is a practical matter for Glenwood Springs High School junior Grace Hall. She has a job and pays for her own gas and upkeep on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 15:30:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1316248,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316233\/revisions\/1316248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}