Crackers and milk for lunch?
Published 12:00 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2015
A student lunch policy currently on the books could leave some students with only crackers and milk.
School Board Superintendent Brian Harvey said Oxford School District’s new child nutrition director, Tim Howington, called attention to the policy and is making recommendations for improvement.
“We do not want to take food from students who don’t qualify for free lunch; however, we must have a way to receive payment for the meals that are given each day to these students,” Harvey said.
Currently, if students exceed the amount of their meal ticket they will receive a packet of snack crackers and a serving of milk. While Howington said the schools would never see a child go hungry, he believes the current system could be updated to ensure every child has a full meal every day.
Howington said at Monday’s board meeting that the school’s software program has the full capability to notify school officials who could then contact parents before the child ran out of lunch money on their account. Alternatively, the system also has the capability to log invoices and track lunch charges.
Harvey said the adjustments to the lunch policy would allow for schools to serve nutritious meals to all students and have a way to track lunches that are not paid for.
The school will then be able to bill parents for these meals.
Howington said a guaranteed full lunch would ensure that every student has more time to think about his or her classwork as opposed to thinking about food.
In other business, the board also:
• Approved a donation of 242 pairs of shoes from ASICS America Corporation valued at $6,531.922, $1,500 to the OHS football program and $10,000 to Good Food for Oxford Schools as well as a teepee.
• Updated current JGEB Concussion Management and Return to play policy to match state standards.
• Voted on remaining questions from the MSBA’s Legislative Survey.