Students boycott school lunches

TALKEETNA – Hold the corn dogs.

And the cinnamon-glazed French toast.

And especially the canned fruit.

The Susitna Valley High School Student Council has organized a boycott, which began Thursday, of pre-packaged food shipped to the remote campus from the Mat-Su Borough School District’s Kurtis Arcala Nutrition Services Center in Palmer.

Council President Amanda Crosby, a senior, said the limited options on the menu aren’t as healthy as they should be and the district should act more responsibly in educating students about how to eat right.

Students and staff at other district high schools pay the same for their meals, but get better and more nutritious food, Crosby said. “We want our money’s worth.”

The length of the boycott depends on progress in improving the quality of food at Su Valley and on community support, Crosby said. Among the boycott’s supporters are Sunshine Community Health Center staffers. At least one local restaurant and several parents have volunteered to provide potluck fare for student lunches.

Crosby and other boycott organizers found themselves in an impromptu meeting Thursday with district nutritional services managers in Principal Matt Clark’s office as the lunch period ended. A door was shut as media attempted to listen in on the meeting.

Clark said the meeting was productive, and students and directors of the nutrition center will “work together to meet everybody’s needs.”

Nutrition Services Supervisor Cindy Reilly could not be reached for comment following the meeting.

“The district personnel certainly listened to the students’ concerns,” Clark said.

As students protested by boycotting lunch, not everyone was unhappy with the food at Su Valley.

Custodian Joseph Walker ate the mixture of noodles, sauce, cheese and meat. He ate it without complaint and thinks others should join in that attitude.

“Why don’t they go eat in a Third World country … and come back here,” Walker said as he listened to a student at a nearby table suggest that juvenile inmates get better food than Su Valley students. “People in Third World countries would kill for what I’ve seen them throw in the trash cans.”

Teacher Bruce Hamler said the meal program is very important to those who may get their most nutritious meals from a subsidized breakfast and lunch program.

“Our kids on free or reduced lunch, a lot of them don’t come home to meals,” he said.

Students sought to improve the nutritional content of their school’s lunches, get junk food out of the cafeteria, get freshly prepared and unprocessed foods on the menu and have more options, like soup, salad, sandwich and potato bars.

“It’s terrible,” student Steen Timmers said of the food at Su Valley. “It comes in, like, plastic wrapping.”

Schools in the Palmer-Wasilla area have food delivered from the district’s central kitchens, and their menus offer fresh fruit, veggie sticks with dip, fresh salads, French fries, pizza and — on some Thursdays — Asian chicken salad.

“We used to get stuff like that,” Timmers said. “We used to actually get choices.”

Junior Kristen Crain, who wore a “Ban junk food from school” sticker made of duct tape on her forehead, said she wants “real food, maybe food that’s prepared here. Even if it looks good” would be a step in the right direction.

Less salt would be another plus, she said.

On Thursday’s boycott day, students went to portable classrooms to eat at parent- and student-sponsored potlucks. The official cafeteria lunch menu was mexi-mac, orange smiles, a brownie and milk. The day before the menu offered a corn dog, baked beans, canned pears, orange-pineapple bread and milk.

The brightly decorated Su Valley cafeteria menu contains nutrition tips, food facts and even a game, but students see the cafeteria’s offerings as inadequate compared to what’s offered at less-remote campuses.

Dave Sutton, a local minister who drives a school bus and also sets out lunch for students at Su Valley, was upset at the cafeteria waste created by the boycott. Paper cups of peeled baby carrots and cartons of chocolate milk flew into the trash on a day when customers for the regular lunch were a few curious students, two reporters and a couple staffers.

A check of the tossed chocolate milk showed the cartons provided by the district had expired Oct. 17, the day before the boycott.

News of the food boycott had reached school board members by late afternoon Thursday.

“It’s going to be very important to deal with it right away,” new school board president Sarah Welton said after receiving a brief notice about the food dispute.

Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or call 352-2270.