Platte County Students Say They’re Still Hungry After Eating School Lunches

Illustration Credit: pussy willow photo by permission from 123rf stock images; My Plate poster from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, art editing by KC Education Enterprise

Platte School District’s Board of Education met Thursday evening, March 28. From a policy standpoint, the highlights of the agenda were:

• A legislative update; and
• A report evaluating the district’s food service program, which included surveys of students and staff. Only about 40 percent of students surveyed agreed with the statement, “Considering the cost of school lunch, I am served enough food.” According to the report:

OPAA! [the food service contractor] is aware of this data and understand that different students have varying caloric needs; but these meals are designed to meet food cost, federal nutrition guidelines and are designed to sustain a particular age group for a specified period of time.

In addition, according to the report, food costs are an issue for the district:

The fixed cost of district meals does not allow the district to break even on the total cost of food served.

Compliance with the new federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act has led to complaints by students in districts not just in Platte County but nationwide. And a protest video created by a group of Kansas students has gone viral:

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