'The pizza looks nasty': RCSD to overhaul 'substandard' school lunch program

"I'll give you a word for the lunch here," Steve Manson said. "Synthetic."

His Wilson Magnet High School classmates were streaming into the cafeteria for their 11 a.m. lunch period.

A few had the entrée of the day, cubed chicken in an inoffensive but bland brown sauce and sprinkled with cheese on top of two open tortillas. Most had pizza. Some took only a side salad or pre-wrapped cold cut sandwich.

Pizza is the only thing Manson usually finds palatable at school, he said. But the slice he got seemed undercooked, and so he threw it out.

"There's more kids saying 'no' to the food than saying 'yes,' so it's a lot of food being wasted," he said.

RCSD for all living memory has been adjusting and re-adjusting its curriculum, grade-level configurations, organizational chart, budgeting practices, professional development and parent engagement strategies.

And yet whenever students are asked their top concerns, the answer has been consistent: the lunch is bad.

"The pizza looks nasty, like it's been sitting there a while," Casmier Sawyer said. "The chili's all right, but only if you're starving. ... I'm living off snacks in school."

Jahmere Libbett agreed and said he spends at least three dollars a day at the vending machine.

"Do you know how much money this school makes off me?" he said. "And by eighth period my stomach be growling, just begging for help."

That consensus was confirmed last month by the district's acting chief financial officer, Vern Connors, who said at a board meeting: "I think everybody here knows the product we’re delivering, the quality of the food, is substandard."

Now, after suffering through well publicized pandemic-era struggles, the district is adding $3 million to its food service program and promising to revamp its lunch offerings in schools across the district.

"That’s the main thing these students have asked for in their rallies and walkouts and everything, is better food," board member Ricardo Adams said. "There’s so much stuff wrapped up in this food. … That’s what the students want. Listen to them."

What's on the new menu?

On the menu starting in September: new crowd-tested offerings including barbecue smoked turkey sandwiches, pasta with alfredo sauce and beef chili, plus additional plant-based items for vegetarian students and a salad bar in almost every school.

High schools will move toward fast casual meals like made-to-order wraps, a loaded baked potato bar and rice and pasta bowls. Bowls of often-ignored apples and oranges will be replaced by plums and fresh-cut pineapple and melon.

The upgrades are expected to cost about $1.7 million more in food costs plus $1.3 million to hire another 30 employees needed to run the kitchens.

In the past, such a price tag has been an obstacle. Food services operations in public schools are supposed to be cost-neutral: a district spends as much as it earns on meal sales and federal reimbursement, with no funding infusion from the general budget.

In Rochester, where both overall enrollment and school meal participation are falling, that formula originally would have led to a decrease in the food budget from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

The school board, though, decided to break the general guideline of a self-funding food service program. It will transfer about $1.5 million from the general fund balance and also take $1 million from the food service fund balance; increased revenue from greater participation is expected to make up the difference.

"To continue to say we’re going to self-sustain this budget line and then say on the record that the food is sub-par," School Board Vice President Beatriz LeBron said. "The reality is, they are breaking their necks to even produce that level of food, and they cannot do it on the budget we’re providing them."

Other area school districts do not generally supplement their food operations from the general fund, though some have done so temporarily to navigate the sharp decrease in funding due to schools closing during COVID-19.

Struggle to replace staff

RCSD, meanwhile, forecasts the need for extra food funding for at least the next several years, if not indefinitely.

Ray Myers, the district's assistant director of support services, said the current inflated prices for many items — 12 cents for a disposable tray, for instance, versus 3 cents previously — provide some hope the district can fit most of the new offerings into the food service budget once prices fall again.

"The cost of goods right now is crazy," he said. "I think there will always be some sort of an infusion — I don’t know if it will always be what it is now. It could go higher or it could go lower."

The district's greatest challenge in putting its plan into action will be hiring the necessary staff. It laid off about 170 food service workers in 2020-21 in anticipation of remote learning and has struggled to replace them as schools have reopened.

In the spring of 2021, the worker shortage led the district to stop serving hot meals, as it lacked the personnel to run its kitchens. Children eating in socially distanced settings also put a strain on the operation.

Even by the standard of cold lunches, those meals were unappetizing. Pictures of entrees like dried turkey sticks and gray-spotted bologna generated outrage among district parents and educators and led RCSD to prioritize the re-establishment of its hot meal program in 2021-22.

Now, RCSD is tasking school kitchens with a greater part of meal preparation rather than portioning out cooked food at the central kitchen and shipping it to schools. It also is contracting with national food service companies to cook some food to its specifications — the chili, for example — instead of doing it in-house.

"I'm loving that," Wilson Magnet's Steve Manson said.

He was interrupted by another student sliding in next to him with a cafeteria rarity: a generous slice of vanilla cake, covered in a thick layer of frosting and rainbow sprinkles.

It seemed too good to be true, and indeed it was.

"This ain't school food," the student said, his fork already loaded up with cake. "There's a birthday party upstairs."

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com. 

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: RCSD to overhaul 'substandard' school lunch program