ARMADA, Mich. – Another school district – this time from Armada, Michigan – is reporting that it lost a significant amount of money on its lunch program last year after the federal government forced schools to serve lower calorie food that students don’t like.
The district with roughly 1,900 students lost about $60,000 on the program last year, according to the Voice News. The district had to dip into its general fund, which pays for teacher salaries and supplies, to compensate for the losses sustained by the “healthy” lunch changes promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama.
The district with roughly 1,900 students lost about $60,000 on the program last year, according to the Voice News. The district had to dip into its general fund, which pays for teacher salaries and supplies, to compensate for the losses sustained by the “healthy” lunch changes promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama.
“Local revenues are going way down because the regulations are requiring us to put out food that the students don’t want to eat. You still have to buy the food; the students just aren’t eating it,” said district accountant Michael Frawley.
“With the new USDA guidelines, we got hit really hard,” food services director Stacy Moyer said. “They limited the protein, they limited the bread, so our nice, big sub sandwiches are now little, so we’re working very hard to do everything we can to get those kids back and try to be real creative on what we can do.”
“So what we try to do so we don’t get caught where we’re not getting a lot of reimbursable meals is we’re telling the kids, ‘you can have your hamburger and your milk, but you also have to take a fruit or vegetable.’ That way we do get the reimbursement money because we can claim it as a meal,” Moyer said in the Voice News story.
School board member Tami Seago suggested the district collect “unwanted lunch foods that could possibly be donated.”
That reminds us of a Seinfeld episode where Elaine suggests donating unwanted muffin stumps to the homeless.
Something tells us that’s not a viable solution for the problems created by the new lunch regulations. How about instead allowing school districts to serve meals students are interested in eating?
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