Showing posts with label lunch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lunch. Show all posts

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Parsippany students protest federal lunch program

MORRIS PLAINS (WABC) -- Some students who usually buy hot lunches are now brown bagging it instead. They are upset over the schools smaller portions and higher prices.

"We're all for healthy foods..but if the portion is smaller the price should be smaller," Brandon Faris, a senior, said.

The majority of students at Parsippany Hills High School made their feelings clear. Barely a customer bought lunch from the Farm Stand, the Solar Grill and the Pizza Zone in the high school's cafeteria.

"No one was buying food, they had this Chinese food set up, nobody got any," senior Joe Hunt said.

Mark Vidovich says he understands. He is president of Pomptonian, the food company providing the school spread.

"They say it's not personal, and they want to make a statement," Vidovich said.

A statement about the federal healthy hunger free kids act of 2010 to make school lunches more nutritious. Pomptonian, serves more than 80 districts that must abide by new rules.

"They introduced the new max on bread, entrees shrank by 33 percent," Vidovich said.

Like a smaller pizza, more carrots, less pasta, more salad and green beans, and no bread. The government raised lunch prices, Vidovich says, because it costs more to serve more fruits and veggies. But you're talking about high schoolers.

"At the end of the meal, you're not full," one student said.

"For $4.50, I can go to Wendy's and get a full meal," said another.

Vidovich says his company raised the concerns to the government. The kids want to make sure it's heard loud and clear.

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Calls for investigation after kindergartner denied school lunch

  Eyewitness NewsMATAWAN, N.J. (WABC) -- Assemblyman Jason O'Donnell has called for a formal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the five-year-old non-verbal, autistic child from Matawan who was denied school lunch.

As Eyewitness News, first reported John Robert Caravella was in just his fourth day at Cliffwood Elementary School in Matawan when he was left without lunch and made to sit and watch other children eat due to a miscommunication between the school and his parents over the $2 per day lunch fee.

"Regardless of the reason, it is outrageous that a five-year-old child was forced to go hungry for an entire day," O'Donnell said. "While it is inexcusable for any child in our public schools to sit through a lunch period watching others eat while having been denied a meal, this particular case is even more appalling. This student was a nonverbal autistic child who couldn't possibly even begin to defend himself. The school staff had an obligation to look out for this child."

O'Donnell wants an investigation into the matter to be conducted by the New Jersey Department of Education.

John Robert's parents acknowledge they didn't fully understand Cliffwood Elementary School's payment system and that their lunch account was in the red.

Matawan's School Superintendent said this has never happened before and it will never happen again, but O'Donnell says he believes the investigation is necessary.

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