School Lunch Story

At Mountain View Highschool’s lunch room, there have been some difficulties about what goes on in the lunchroom. There are students who are unhappy with the lunches served to them which could be due to endless different reasons, however, they are not aware of the process of preparing the food for the whole school.

The lunch process is longer than most people would think. According to Nataile Rhea, the food service supervisor, first the lunches are sent to them every Saturday, then they start cooking the lunch depending on what it is which they find out on the day they have to serve it.

“When students take lunches but without any fruits or vegetables then we lose funding” Rhea says. “We can tell if they aren’t equally served as the main dish and if we don’t give enough out the state won’t reimburse… which is a problem too, because a lot of it is just thrown away.” This is why when students don’t take a fruit or vegetable they have to pay $3.85 for it because if we don’t give out enough then it could lead to either no lunches or no more free lunches.
Rhea also mentioned that since covid, when they started making their lunches free it made it harder for the school because of that extra money they would make off it. “This also the reason we had to cut our clam shells in half because the trays were all out” Rhea said. “I believe the quality of the food didn’t go down since the pandemic but the quantity did since we only prepare what we are given.” What Rhea says makes perfect sense since the pandemic supplies dropped and that would mean it’s harder to get certain food items.

“This is also why we served a lot of corn dogs at one point because that’s all we had,” Rhea said. “This is also why they had to stop giving Forks and Spoons since they were out so they just gave the students Sporks”. So when students think that the lunches are losing quality it’s not the lunch ladies’ fault but the given resources. This isn’t anyone’s fault when it comes to the quality of the food since covid messed it all up which also explains why some milk comes out chunky. All and all, a lot more happens in the preparation of the lunches than the students would assume.