School Lunch

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura) 10/24/2016 at 20:27 • Filed to: None

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The kids wouldn’t eat a bite of the rice. At least if there were a bottle of Tapat í o or Sriracha or something . 95% of it wound up in the trash. I see the children carrying their trays at lunch and I want to weep because I imagine that this is what prison food must look like. This is at an elementary school in the SF Bay Area.

There’s a student teacher I work with, a retired Chevron engineer, who visited refineries in Korea. The kitchen has a metric: weight of discarded food. The higher the weight, the lower the kitchen salaries. Simple as that.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:34

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that doesn’t look bad to me

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:40

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School cafeteria lunches always seem weird to me. Never had a cafeteria growing up, we all brought lunch. Even if there was a dedicated lunch room, we still brought our own lunches and ate there.

jkm7680 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:41

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That looks nasty.

But it gets worse...

My citroen won't start > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:45

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Grapes, a pear and what seems like some tasty rice. What is wrong?

Why are there whole pears on the trash? I wanted one today but there’s none in the kitchen, I had to eat an apple, like one of the common folk.

twinturbobmw > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:46

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That definitely looks more appetizing than the school lunches we had. I stopped eating school lunches in 5th grade because they were too gross. I’d rather skip lunch than eat whatever they provided, even if it was free.

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:49

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Those appear to be bougie grass-fed f’ed up kids. Rice is delicious. Grapes are awesome, pears even better. Let them starve if they don’t want to eat this.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 20:55

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That’s not even fried rice. It’s like someone made all the ingredients separately and just stirred it all together.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 21:13

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Way better than I had growing up. But the lunches at my kid’s school are even better still, but probably too adult for some of the kids. My daughter won’t touch the stuff, but she’s crazy picky to begin with.

Rico > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 21:14

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My elementary school lunches were much better than that. I wouldn’t touch those mystery meat chunks.

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 21:49

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When I spend the day at school as a Watch DOG, I always spend the entire lunch period in the lunch room. So I see what the kids eat—and don’t eat. By and large, the kids who bring a lunch from home eat everything. The great majority of kids who buy, end up throwing away most of it. The amount of food that is tossed on a daily basis is appalling. One of the moms organized a composting project, but after a couple of years the school said it was too expensive and they canceled it. So now all the food goes in the trash with all the styrofoam. My boys buy twice a week, but we look at the menu and they choose the meals they like. The other days we make sandwich, veggie and fruit. I know it’s hard for some folks to make a lunch every day, but, from what I’ve seen, kids definitely eat better when they eat from home.

ttyymmnn > twinturbobmw 10/24/2016 at 21:51

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When I was in 5th grade (1977), we had “lunch ladies” who came every day and made everything fresh, for the most part. I ate the school lunch every day, and, as I recall, it was quite good. Especially the pizza. The lunches I see nowadays when I volunteer at the school are tasteless, heated-from-frozen disasters.

AddictedToM3s - Drives a GC > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 21:52

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Having grown up in the Bay Area I can say that at least looks miles better than what we got for school lunches in elementary school back in the day.

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 21:52

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The higher the weight, the lower the kitchen salaries. Simple as that.

Shhh! Don’t give the district bean counters any ideas. I don’t think the cafeteria staff has any say in what is served or how it is prepared.

ttyymmnn > BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind 10/24/2016 at 21:54

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The problem, though, is that the food just gets wasted. There are plenty of hungry people in town who would eat it. I think that what the cafeterias need to focus on is what kids will eat, not just what is good for them. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Frank Grimes > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 22:19

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I miss square pizza.

wiffleballtony > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 22:45

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That looks a lot healthier than the lunches I had in the SF area as a kid.

ttyymmnn > Frank Grimes 10/24/2016 at 22:47

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We got rectangular pizza back in the late 70s. I loved it, and would always buy two pieces.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 10/24/2016 at 22:49

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In my school district, they definitely don’t. Our menus are set across all campuses by the district. Our staff actually got reprimanded for making homemade meneudo to sell to us teachers for breakfast. -_-

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 22:50

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Are you a fellow educator? What’s your gig?

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 10/24/2016 at 22:54

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I remember hearing a story about some cafeteria workers who were fired because they took food home that was slated to be thrown out. The district charged them with theft.....

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 10/24/2016 at 22:56

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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 22:57

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I just read that in the NYT. I was going to email it to you.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 10/24/2016 at 23:11

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I am a middle school math teacher. I taught math at the high school level for 12 years, then a year in administration, then two years at the middle school. I just transferred to an elementary school to teach 6th grade math, but I have to go get a multiple-subject credential. Big change from what I’m used to...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 10/24/2016 at 23:12

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Appalling. I’d like to see the president issue an executive order to have those debts forgiven.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 10/24/2016 at 23:23

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Wearing many hats keeps you employable.

My certification is Music EC-12, which means there’s typically only 4-5 jobs I can fill on a given campus, if that.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 10/25/2016 at 01:15

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Whereabouts?

As for employability, I am a tenured secondary mathematics teacher with no plans on committing murder or sexual assault, so I am pretty much guaranteed employment for life. For me it is not about staying employed, but rather, not becoming some old teacher who did exactly the same thing for 30 years at the same school in the same classroom. In the real world, where people have real jobs, if you’re any good, there’s a chance you’ll get tapped on the shoulder and asked to take on a new roll or responsibility. Never happen for a teacher. No raise, no promotion, only a long and dusty trail to mediocrity. The only career path for a teacher is out of the classroom. But not for me...