Gilroy
– Dismissed for lunch at 12:16, Gilroy High School junior
Abraham Orozco walks at a fast clip to the
”
cafe
”
lunch line. To get there, he and a handful of other students,
coming from the front of the gymnasium facing north, must walk
along the east side of the building, and around the back, to get in
a line forming at the gym’s northwest corner.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Dismissed for lunch at 12:16, Gilroy High School junior Abraham Orozco walks at a fast clip to the “cafe” lunch line. To get there, he and a handful of other students, coming from the front of the gymnasium facing north, must walk along the east side of the building, and around the back, to get in a line forming at the gym’s northwest corner.
This particular lunch line serves all students, but is the main line for students from low-income families who receive a free or reduced-price meal.
The hassle for getting there is necessary: The high school is experimenting with one-way traffic around the gym, because construction on the student center makes the walkway on the building’s northwest corner too narrow for two-way traffic.
But school and district officials think the inconvenience could be one reason why too few low-income GHS students are taking advantage of the free and reduced meal program.
The food service coordinator for Gilroy High told Assistant Principal Greg Camacho-Light that while 500 students should be picking up a lunch every day, about 150 were at the start of the week.
Principal Bob Bravo says he worries that these students simply aren’t eating lunch. They qualify for free and reduced lunch because of their parents’ low income, so if they’re not eating the school-provided lunches, chances are they’re not eating, or they’re spending too much on other food.
Orozco, who qualifies to receive the $2.25 meals for free, said he’s seen both happen.
“They pay because they don’t want to walk,” he said.
Orozco said on the first day of school Monday, he didn’t know where to go to get his lunch, and had to be directed by friends.
“We certainly don’t want to put up barriers in the sense that, we think we have done that,” Camacho-Light said. “We’ll come up with a plan that will make it easier to do this.”
There are two other lunch carts on campus where the students can get a free or reduced price meal, but Camacho-Light said the numbers from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were not encouraging.
“My understanding is, it’s about a third of those being served that could be. They may have other reasons for not being there, but we’re certainly not making it any easier.”
Besides wanting students to eat – both to get proper nutrition and to maintain learning – the district has a financial incentive for getting more qualified students to eat the subsidized meals.
“The foundation for the (food service) budget is serving so many free and reduced and so many paid meals, and we’re behind at the high school,” Brinkman said. “If we can’t serve the people, what that means is we could hit a deficit because we wouldn’t be getting that reimbursement.”
Gilroy Unified School District is reimbursed by the federal and state governments for school meals sold. For a paid meal costing $2.25, it receives 24 cents in federal money. For reduced price meals, it receives $1.87 from the federal government and 13 cents from the state. For free meals, it gets $2.41, and another 13 cents.
The district’s food service, after a 25 cent meal price increase this year, expects to serve more breakfasts and lunches than last year, and will raise $1.12 million. It still will spend $9,000 more than it brings in from that and other revenue sources, which will bring food service reserves to $34,541.
The problem is more than just removing inconveniences and getting students to eat the discounted meals; it’s also getting students to qualify for the program, which they must do every year.
“What’s happening with these kids?” Bravo said, referring to the higher number of elementary and middle school children eating the subsidized meals. “It’s not like they suddenly … don’t qualify.”
According to the California Department of Education, 30 percent of GHS students in 2003 were qualified for free and reduced price meals. That’s considerably lower than the 45 percent of students district-wide who qualified for the program.
Several issues come into play with high schoolers, said Steve Brinkman, assistant superintendent of administrative services. Those include a stigma attached to receiving a reduced or free lunch; students not identifying siblings to receive meals; and families with multiple names who are difficult to track.
School, district and food service personnel will be meeting Tuesday to compare the numbers of students fed this week with the number fed at the same time last year and come up with a plan. Camacho-Light says the plan will involve streamlining the lunch-buying process and advertising the program to students.
