CHANGES COMING TO BRENHAM HIGH SCHOOL CAFETERIA
When students at Brenham High School return from the Christmas holidays in January, they’ll find some new food options in the school cafeteria.
The Brenham ISD Child Nutrition Department has made improvements to the high school menu and cafeteria operations based on feedback from a recent student survey. These changes will give students more control, increase daily food choices, and reduce overall waste.
Students can expect multiple lines in the cafeteria beginning in January, including a daily pizza line, burger line, and basket line, as well as the traditional main line with a hot, homestyle lunch. Hot wings and mini corn dogs will be back by popular demand, and new pizza options will be offered. The main line will feature entrees such as chicken parmesan, quesadillas, enchiladas and spaghetti.
Compartment-style styrofoam trays will replace numerous individual plastic food containers at the high school, which is more sanitary and produces less waste. Students will also be able to self-serve sides using a pre-portioned serving spoon.
BISD Director of Child Nutrition Sandra Baxter said, “We are giving students more options on a daily basis and thus changing the dynamic of what lands in the trash can. These options will translate to less food trash, greater fiscal responsibility, and happier students.”
Thank goodness!! THRILLED with the new changes at BHS cafeteria!! THANK YOU BISD!! and to all those complaining about healthier choices blah blah blah….throw a bag of carrots in your kid’s back pack…see how long they sit there. I pay for my kid’s lunch so I would much rather know my kid is getting something to eat, that is edible, that he enjoys than have my hard earned money hitting the trash can. he burns plenty of calories in athletics so i’m all for him having a burger and pizza line. and for all the “pack a lunch” people….if you don’t like the new changes…YOU pack your kids a lunch. nothing “foolish” about these new changes. they’re over due.
I have eaten lunches this year at the Junior High, ECLC, and one of the elementary schools, and I found nothing wrong with them. The lunches are not gourmet, but they are definitely palatable.
Cut the lunch line out and shut down the main serving line and fast food line. Require students to be bring a lunch. This will require parents to actually care for their kids instead of the state taking care of them. No more complaints about unhealthy food or not enough options, it’s on the parents as it always should be.
Food stamps more than cover parents that can’t afford to feed their kids. Nothing wrong with a PB&J, my kids and I have been eating them for 15 years now. And if you still can’t feed your kids, that’s a case for CPS.
Spend the money on education for a change. Smaller classrooms that are compartmentalized into learning types such as spatial, aural, linguistic, and kinesthetic would be a great change.
I’ve never eaten at the BISD cafeterias, so I cannot direct my comment to BISD. This is a general opinion.
While I like the idea of a hot lunch option, I agree with most of your post. That is especially true of the roll of parents. Too many parents let their kids eat junk food daily, never make them eat what is good for them. They pick up their kids from school and stop on the way home to let them fill up on junk. No wonder the kid won’t eat at school. They don’t even park and walk in with their kids. They pull into the drive through lane so the kid can continue playing games on his phone or some other device. The kids go home and are allowed to eat what they want. They want the school to serve healthy options, but the parents shun their responsibility at home. (The government requires certain healthy options. That school pizza & corn dog with little fat & less salt won’t taste like the ones bought at the fast food place.)
Like you, I have asked over and over why kids from families on the Lone Star card (food stamps), WIC, etc. are given free lunches (often free breakfasts & even summer meals in some cases). Is not that what WIC & The Lone Star card for? Some say well the mom works and doesn’t have time. NOT SO. QUIT WITH THE EXCUSES. Many of those households on welfare have NO employed parent. Mothers paying taxes to support such programs are getting up and caring for their kids, if they work outside the home or not. It is time for society to take ownership of their responsibilities, rather than dumping them at the doorstep of the schools and taxpayers. Having children is not an entitlement, it is taking on a long term, serious responsibility. It’s not always fun.
Too bad it’s so easy that pretty much anybody can do it. Reproduce, that is. Since you and Christopher have such a problem with how other adults don’t raise their children, what is your specific solution on how to change the behavior of folks who aren’t intelligent enough to know how much responsibility is needed to effectively raise children without society’s help?
If you think todays parenting is the Golden Standard, I really worry about the state of this country.
I said nothing of the sort. Do you suggest a solution?
Here’s what would help. PARENTS NEED TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THEIR ROLE AS A PARENT. (1) Every kid is brought up to respect others. (2) Every kid is taught to respect property, public, his own, that of other people (3) Every child needs behavioral boundaries. (4) They need to know there are consequences to their actions (5) Every physically fit kid needs quality play time, every day that includes physical activity) (6) Children need to be exposed & allow to explore the world around them. Cell phones, e- notebooks, electronic games should not be their only interest. (7) Every child needs love and quality time from his parents.
Here is a situation I have seen all too often, a couple of parents take their children to a fast food restaurant. The parents point the kids to a booth, then they sit someplace else. The kids run all over, even touch other’s food, That is NOT the child’s fault, It is the parents’ fault. Another, you are in a retail establishment, kids are running up and down the isles, kicking soccer balls. throwing footballs, running into people &/or displays. Not a parent is in sight.
I love children, especially active and inquisitive kids. That is what kids are about, but children need monitoring. They sometimes need more that a “Now Timmy, stop that.” We had 3 sons. They were very active and far from angles, but they behaved in public. They knew bad behavior meant there were consequences.
This is in response to your solution. Ralph, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the solution you propose (that parents become better parents) is well-known as a problem in itself and is widely regarded as intractable. Just for starters, how do you propose to change the behavior of millions of adults? Do you think they will change spontaneously? Perhaps if they are better informed? Maybe their own parents didn’t provide good parenting examples, so we should time-travel and change their behavior? Or maybe we could just pass a law against ‘bad parenting?’ You have provided a list of goals, but no path toward achieving them. It’s a great idea that parents should do a better job, but a little unclear on how ‘we’ can ‘make’ them do it.
What a contrast from your usually harshly conservative tone. Christopher doesn’t want any more school buses or school lunches, but he wants me to pay for his precious snowflake to learn spatially, kinesthetically, etc. What does this even mean, beyond delivering the same materials 3-times over and requiring three times as much space? Why can’t your kids learn like every kid used to? By sitting quietly in class, paying attention and doing as the teacher asks? This system worked for a very long time, until society decided we could make it ‘better.’ Look how well that has turned out!
Patsy,
What I find harsh is rewarding parents for not caring enough to feed their own children even though they have access to the food. If the state is going to be the parent, at least take the real parent out of the loop as a disqualification because of neglect through CPS. The more the state and our public school systems does outside of education, the less involved the parents will be. The less involved the parents are, the less care the child receives.
Answers to your questions:
1. People, not just kids, comprehend and learn differently. A child would not learn the same thing presented three different ways, that’s not what I’m saying. The child learns, along with learning peers, in a specific classroom learning environment . Altering the traditional classroom(s) to gear it to learning types would likely mean a different top 10, valedictorian, etc., as well as much higher learning for all. It’s egalitarian, why would a progressive object, the tests are still the same?
2. Of course my kids can learn in a traditional classroom. But they will perform better and get the best test results if taught based on how THEY learn; and it maybe that that it is the old classroom format. For some, a change like that could mean the difference maintaining an intergenerational poor status quo and rocketing to the upper classes.
3. “By sitting quietly in class”, maybe this works best for the child, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the child retains and absorbs information by involvement, working through it from the start, practical application while learning fundaments, music, movement, etc.
“Christopher doesn’t want any more school buses or school lunches, but he wants me to pay for his precious snowflake…”
-buses can be provided but parents should pay for the ride, parents need to provide the lunch, parents provide the means for their child to participate in sports as well
– I’ll have spent somewhere between $225,000 and $275,000 over my life on property taxes. This amount more than pays for my own kids to attend public school (or a private school and some college if Texas had school choice vouchers like more than half the US does). I don’t want your money.
-my kids are very precious to me but like every liberal I’ve ever known, you’ll attack babies and infants (as you’ve just done with mine) if they don’t fit your progressive narrative.
And by the way, you think it would be cheaper to take all the kids away from underperforming parents and make them wards of the state than to just buy their breakfast and lunch? Did you even think that through at all? Yet you repeatedly call me progressive…
It’s not just b-fast and lunch during the school year, it’s also an afternoon snack, preschool daycare, transportation to and from, summer meals, etc.
If you want to create parental indifference and boost parental neglect, these programs are excellent at doing it and have consistently been proven reliable at it since about 1970.
On the other hand, if you have a policy that requires parents to pull their weight or lose their children, I know you will see the numbers of indifferent and neglectful parents go down. I also know that you will be breaking the cycle of neglectful parents begetting even more neglectful parents. I also know that while cost at social services may go up initially, they will go do down after a few years. Public school costs will also go down up front.
Yes, I’ve thought this through, glad you asked.
Then I can’t agree with your conclusion. I think a lot of the folks I know in the social services situation you describe would be delighted to ditch their kids if it didn’t cost them too much inconvenience. And thinking that putting kids into the foster system “breaks the cycle” doesn’t jive with the stats I’m familiar with. We’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this, I’m afraid.
Don’t leave out the other schools. My 4th grader would get in the car starving at 3:30pm, and I was wondering why because she eats lunch at noon. A teacher’s aide advised she tosses her tray daily because the food is not good. I’m all for a healthy diet, but the quality of the food needs to be better than what it currently is.
It seems to me like you are basically giving them the option to eat junk food everyday. Corn dogs and pizza? Thats really how you want our youth to eat on a regular basis? And then, of course, there is the traditional foodline. Why not focus on a more pallatable balanced meal plan? You DO KNOW that most teenagers, when left to their own devices, will not make great food choices on a regular basis. Isn’t it our job to give them options within a healthy parameter? I think this is foolish.
If you attended BHS since the major lunch changes to a “healthier” option, you would see that it actually influenced kids to make even unhealthier choices than before. The food has gotten to the point to where the kids refuse to eat it, therefore either not eating at all and going to get fast food/have fast food dropped of by their parents and friends (which is even unhealthier), or buying the food and dumping most of what they were given into the trash can. The sights of perfectly good food piling up in trashcans was very drastic and I’m glad that BHS has taken strides to finally improve this problem. Not to mention the kids that are on free lunch, and it’s very possible that the only significant meals for many of them are the ones served at school. If it so distasteful that they throw it away, or opt to just not eat at all, there’s obviously an issue. So to me, I’d rather see high school students get to eat better tasting food, verses fast food everyday, and I’d especially rather see kids eating than starving. And if you still aren’t convinced, I challenge you to go and eat just one lunch at the high school. You’ll see why these changes are necessary.
Pack a lunch then
PB&J throughout all of my schooling…including college. Cheap and it tastes good…but I’d hate for people to have to give up their iPhones and the expensive bills that go with them in order to eat…but who am I to judge.
How do you suggest those who cannot afford to pack a lunch get to eat something that is actually palatable?
Making your own food is more cost effective than eating out…if you don’t think this is true then you’ve never cooked your own food before. My spouse and I can make 10 Meals for about $15. that feeds both of us for lunches for the entire week. An oh ya, the food tastes really good.
No vegan/vegetarian options? Not all children want fried, pre-made, processed foods. Look at the correlation of obesity in teenagers and school lunches. Look at the lunches in other countries! Why do we want to continue to give our kids low-nutrient foods?
It would be nice if all schools gave more options. My 5th grader won’t eat at school because she says the food is disgusting. After eating with her a few times and getting a tray, I agree.
Let us hope that the change really is an improvement over what has been served since the beginning of this school year. I have heard nothing but complaints from my children and their friends. The food quality has really gone down since last year. It seems like the person in charge is trying to save money by using inferior/low quality products. For instance last year they had a chicken burger made with an all white whole meat product. Now they tell me it’s like a giant flat brown nugget. Also, as far as ‘SELF SERVE’ goes, that just sounds like a way to spread germs! How many of our students are stopping to wash their hands before lunch? We will most likely continue with our routine unless my kids come home and tell me the cafeteria has done a complete turn around. Most days I send them easy to eat finger food snacks. I even bring them a hot lunch once a week. For the price they charge for a school lunch, it should be more palatable!
Let us hope that the change really is an improvement over what has been served since the beginning of this school year. I have heard nothing but complaints from my children and their friends. The food quality has really gone down since last year. It seems like the person in charge is trying to save money by using inferior/low quality products. For instance last year they had a chicken burger made with an all white whole meat product. Now they tell me it’s like a giant flat brown nugget. Most days I send them easy to eat finger food snacks. I even bring them a hot lunch once a week. For the price they charge for a school lunch, it should be more palatable!