Superintendent, food service director respond to lunch issues

After parents alleged the food service department (FSD) was both not providing enough meals and not moving lines fast enough for students at the Blaine middle and high schools, superintendent Christopher Granger dedicated more than half of his monthly town-hall style meeting to address concerns and dispel rumors on September 30.

Granger, along with FSD director Brenda Bowles, said that while waits in line were slightly longer than usual at the beginning of the school year, the cafeterias never ran out of food, and wait times in line have reduced.

“Obviously we want the students to enjoy being at school. We want them to enjoy the lunch options that we have, within the guidelines that we have to serve, and we want parents to be happy with what their kids are getting,” Granger said. “Nobody in any department is working in the vein of not trying to be responsive to students.”

To an audience of roughly a dozen parents, staff and community members, Granger and Bowles provided information on how lunch is served, how funding for lunches works, and showed sample meals  that secondary students are offered for lunch.

“We can always review what we’re doing and get better,” Granger said. “There’s never been, ‘This is the way it is and it’s never going to be different.’”

Currently, both middle school and high school students receive school meals from the middle school cafeteria. The high school cafeteria is used as a central kitchen but not for serving food. Granger said the district reduced the number of FSD staff in response to a declining number of students purchasing school lunches.

Student participation in school lunch has dropped steadily since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data provided by the school district. During the 2021-22 school year, when school meals were free due to pandemic-era funding, 52,367 meals were served to high school students. During the 2023-24 school year, just 22,700 meals were served, a drop of nearly 30,000 meals not being reimbursed by the state.

With a drop in enrollment, combined with free meals being curtailed, the school district could not justify keeping the same amount of staff, and the district decided to consolidate and serve food from a single location for secondary students, Granger said.

According to Bowles, the food service department has 10 employees preparing food and seven as cashiers, serving and checking out food. That number is slightly down from previous years, with one employee being laid off due to budget reductions, and another retiring, Granger said.

Parents had reached out to administration with complaints about long lines for secondary students during lunch, with some saying students were late to their next classes due to delays. Bowles said the FSD has a goal of getting students through the line in 10 minutes or less, and said that the longest observed wait during the first week of school was roughly 14 minutes.

“We attribute that to new kids at the middle school coming up, getting used to new environments and our own cooks getting used to new setups,” Bowles said. “We rarely go over 10 minutes.”

Bowles said the FSD serves about 190 meals to middle and high school students on an average day, but that number can fluctuate depending on the menu and interest from students. During the September 30 town hall meeting, Bowles said that she hasn’t seen a day where there was no food available for the last students in line, but that hot food can go quicker than cold, grab-and-go options.

School food service departments cannot legally make a profit, and all funding for school meals are reimbursed through the state. If more students continue to purchase meals at school, FSD may be able to hire more staff in response, Bowles said.

Bowles encourages any students, parents or community members who have questions about school lunch to call her at 360/332-0358.