At a little past 11 a.m. each school day, the relative calm of Catholic High School in Little Rock is shattered by the stampede of hundreds of hungry teenage boys seeking midday sustenance. En masse, they cram into the narrow serving area of the school's cafeteria grabbing plates and ala carte selections before hunkering down in groups at tables.
Chances are few of these adolescent diners spend much time considering the nutritional value of the day's offering and truth be told neither did many schools not long ago. However, as the twin epidemics of poverty and obesity persist in Arkansas and elsewhere, more schools large and small are taking steps to help ensure students are exposed to healthier food options.
Catholic schools participate in federal program |
"A lot of our children spend a lot of time sitting in front of a screen," said Sharon Warren, principal of St. Mary School in Paragould. "Some of our children didn't even know what fruits are. We served peaches one time, and some of our students thought they were oranges."
Across the diocese, one needn't look far to see parochial schools addressing the problem of student nutrition head-on. Healthier food options and health classes designed to help students make better choices about what they eat are reinventing the school lunch.
"Ten years ago, anything would work in a menu. Just so long as there was food, no one really worried about it," said Bill Miller, general manager of J&F Food Service, which caters lunch to Catholic High, St. Edward and Our Lady of the Holy Souls schools in Little Rock as well as North Little Rock's Immaculate Conception School.
"Now, we see more clients trying to change the culture. Where they once served french fries and instant mashed potatoes, you see more broccoli and carrots."
Such was the case in Paragould when Warren took over five years ago, and she immediately made it a priority to improve students' diets. Dessert was one of the earliest casualties of her efforts; once a daily staple it is now reserved for holidays and special occasions. The money saved helps pay for fruits and vegetables, bought fresh when possible.
A similar strategy has been employed by St. Mary School in Lake Village under second-year principal Mary Belle Tonos. Tonos, appalled by the low-quality meals coming out of the kitchen that wound up in the trash as much as in students' stomachs, now boasts of a lunch program that feeds students selections a world away from the stereotypical cafeteria fare.
"Yesterday, we had pork roast, real mashed potatoes and great northern beans," she said. "We always have fresh bread. When we serve spaghetti, it's often on homemade pasta."
Tonos said the transformation of the program from highly processed and high-waste to today where all students buy a school lunch turned on two decisions. The first was to withdraw from the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted meal program, and its myriad compliance guidelines. The second was finding a cafeteria manager as passionate about quality product as she was.
"My cafeteria manager is one of our parents who loves to cook," Tonos said. "When I recruited her for this job she quickly realized that she was just heating things, not cooking. It bothered her as much as it bothered me."
Adopting such an attitude at the administrative level is just one step — albeit a crucial one — in the process. Another is cost. As families continue to struggle with the rising cost of living, raising lunch fees to cover more nutritional meals is rarely an option so administrators often have to get creative to create healthier menus.
"You have to find that fine balance," said first-year principal Alexandra Pritchett of St. Joseph School in Pine Bluff, which doesn't serve a lunch but stocks healthier options in its vending machines. "Prices are soaring, especially for produce, and it's really hard to keep prices on healthy options low. We're constantly pricing out the cost of lower quality versus higher quality."
And, as Pritchett discovered both in Pine Bluff and in her previous assignment as dean of student life at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock, one has to be equally strategic in how new food items are introduced.
"Very often items come in a variety pack where three selections are really popular and you are stuck with the other two," she said. "The teenage mind being what it is, they love something on Monday and by Friday they don't touch it."
Even though all the administrators reported their changes meeting student and parental approval, as Miller put it, "Making changes comes down to economics. You have to get new things in front of students for them to try it, but not every school can afford to serve something 15 or 20 times before kids start eating it."
To speed up students' change metabolisms, administrators are using health and wellness curriculum to back up what's served in the lunchroom. Guest speakers from local colleges, nutritionists and other adults speak to kids about sound eating habits as the foundation for a healthy lifestyle. Tonos goes a step further, seating homeroom teachers with their students at lunch, encouraging kids to try new things. Still, it's a battle fought meal by meal.
"Our school culture is changing, but it's still a balancing act," Warren said. "We want to provide more nutrition, but we want them to eat it too."
Catholic schools participate in federal program
Sixteen of the Diocese of Little Rock's 30 schools participate in the National School Lunch Program, which provides free and reduced-price lunches to families who qualify. The program serves 539 Catholic school students, about 8 percent of the total enrollment. In 2010 the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed to address obesity and hunger in children and reform school lunches. Schools were required to make different food choices to participate in the National Lunch Program. For example, fat and calories were reduced in the lunches, and schools were restricted on the "junk food" sold in vending machines and school stores. Now, students are more likely to see fresh produce, whole wheat bread and low-fat milk on their lunch tray.
Superintendent Vernell Bowen said some Catholic schools choose not to participate in the program because they don't have enough students who qualify to make the program cost-effective. Some school officials in the diocese have also reported higher food waste associated with subsidized lunches, adding further budgetary strain. Bowen said schools opting out of the program typically work individually with lower-income families to provide the meals for a low fee.
