What time does your child eat lunch at school?
The answer to that question created quite a stir among parents in cyberspace last week.
Several media outlets, most notably NBC’s Today Show and Nightly News with Brian Williams decided to shine the national spotlight on the fact that some kids eat school lunch as early as 9:30 a.m.
Thankfully, my daughter is not one of them. Rather, she dines in the school cafeteria at a more socially “acceptable” hour of 11 a.m. However, she attends a small Catholic elementary school which houses kids from preschool through fifth grade only. If she were enrolled in the larger public school, which sits just three blocks away from our home, she’d been forced to eat chicken nuggets, peas, carrots, rice and pretzels at 10 a.m. with the rest of the third graders.
As with most things in today’s society, the time of day your child eats school lunch boils down to money.
Overcrowded schools beget earlier lunch times. What’s more, if your child’s school cafeteria can only seat a small number of kids, it’s not unusual for the first round of lunches to be served while most Americans are still polishing off their first cup of coffee.
“Some cafeterias are very small and enrollment may be very large so that schools must start serving lunch early and end later to accommodate all the students,” Frances O’Donnell, coordinator at the New York State Education Department’s Child Nutrition Program told NBC’s Today Show. “Schools have become flexible in order to accommodate the educational and nutritional needs of children.”
And let’s not forget the other “al”—financial.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, public schools are reimbursement for lunches served between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and can request waivers if they need to serve lunch outside those hours.
Such as 9:00 a.m.?
Can you imagine having to eat pizza, broccoli, mashed potatoes or ravioli at 9:30 a.m.?
What’s more, how are these kids, who are forced to eat school “brunch,” feeling at noon or 2 p.m.? They’re probably starving, irritable, and tired.
Are your children part of the school “brunch” crowd?