Lunch changes in LR schools

The Little Rock School District has changed the way it serves lunch to some younger students in hopes of keeping uneaten food out of the trash and cutting unnecessary costs.

Last week, third- through fifth-grade grade students started participating in a national initiative called Offer Versus Serve, which allows them to take at least three out of five food items, leaving behind dishes they don’t intend to eat. At least one of their selected foods must be a vegetable or fruit.

Previously, the district required those students to take all five items, even if they knew some of them would be bound for the trash.

“We monitored plate waste and we found that a lot of the foods we were putting on the plates, students weren’t consuming,” said Lilly Bouie, director of child nutrition for the Little Rock School District.

The change comes as the school district is complying with new school lunch standards under the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which call for more-nutritious items, such as black beans and dark, leafy greens.

Those standards have been cause for concern in some school districts.

At a public hearing host-ed by U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., in Jonesboro in October, school leaders said pupils were throwing away much of their food and going to their afternoon classes hungry.

Bouie said it’s important to serve nutritious foods to the district’s students because, for many of them, lunches and breakfasts served at school are a primary source of nutrition.

Of the district’s 23,594 students, 72 percent qualify for free or reduced lunches because of their family income levels, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Education.

That figure does not include pre-kindergarten children.

The district has used Offer Versus Serve in its high schools for years, Bouie said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the program in 1975. It made elementary schools eligible to participate in 1981.

Previously, schools that claimed federal reimbursements for free and reducedpriced student lunches had to serve every dish to every student to maintain eligibility.

Bouie said the program should help the district trim “plate waste” and save money.

Little Rock public schools expect to spend $4.65 million on food in the current fiscal year, said Kathy Davidson, finance director for the childnutrition department.

In the past, students from vegetarian households threw out meat dishes they were required to take, even though they had no plans to eat them, Bouie said.

Some foods, such as beans, are more commonly rejected.And some days, students just don’t want a certain dish, Bouie said, recalling a day when countless students left uneaten bananas on their lunch trays.

“This is the wise thing to do if you see that the children aren’t eating all of the food items that we’re putting on the plate,” she said.

The district calls the new food-service plan Your Stars, Your Tray, Your Way, marking each food group with adifferent colored star to help students make choices.

Throughout the district last week, teachers gestured toward large signs explaining the options and students took home free bookmarks to help them learn the food groups.