Dec. 09--Students who led a boycott of school lunches at Theodore Roosevelt High School appear willing to audit the lunches as requested by Chicago Public Schools officials but want to share their findings with cafeteria staff rather than CPS, reports their teacher, Timothy Meegan. Students were also halting the boycott but were willing to reinstitute it if issues of food quality go unaddressed.
"We don't want students pitted against lunchroom staff," Meegan said. "We're interested in improving the quality of food."
The students, all participants in Meegan's five Civics classes, were voting today on how to respond to a meeting Tuesday with CPS officials and representatives of Aramark, the Philadelphia-based food services company that provides the lunches at the school. The boycott began last week and climaxed Monday with some 539 students out of a student body of 1,100 refusing to buy the lunch, according to Meegan. The students are seeking better quality lunches and have been making their case on a website, "The School Lunch Project: Culinary Denial."
Meegan said Tuesday that he and the students who attended the meeting came away "a bit disappointed." He didn't want to comment for the students but said he thought the students should have done most of the talking, not school officials. The discussion, he added, was focused more on food preparation issues than questions of food quality. The students, he said, were asked to audit the school lunch for the remainder of the fall term and report to CPS officials on their findings next month. He also said five students would be invited to taste new dishes that could turn up on the school lunch menu in three months or so.
On Wednesday, Meegan reiterated his assertion that CPS was focused more on food preparation issues than food quality as the students wished. Still, he said students are "cautiously optimistic" improvements will take place. They want to reach out to parents and students at other Chicago schools to show food quality is a district-wide issue, he said.
Emily Bittner, CPS's director of communications, was not present at Tuesday's meeting with students but issued a statement describing it as "productive."
"We look forward to working together to address their needs and moving forward, we developed an action plan that includes forming a School Dining Committee, where students can continue to participate firsthand in the meal planning process," Bittner's statement read. She wrote that "CPS is committed to serving healthy and nutritious meals to its students."
Karen Cutler, Aramark's vice president of corporate communications, also issued a statement appreciative of the meeting.
"We welcome CPS's move to form a School Dining Committee with the students and look forward to engaging with them in the coming weeks. We also encouraged the students to raise any concerns directly with the manager in the cafeteria so that we can respond quickly," Cutler wrote.
wdaley@tribpub.com
