school lunches

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I just saw an article saying Michigan is going to make it so every child in school gets a free school lunch regardless of income, and I have to say that's pretty amazing. I wish Ohio would get behind that. My son's elementary school (which is the school I have been working at for the past several years) is the only school in our district that does that because the majority of our school is low-income. The other schools in our district don't have the same percentage of lower-income kids as we do. I actually get kind of annoyed at how expensive lunch has gotten. I could pack my son's lunch, and I did for a while, but he gets tired of sandwiches, and there's only so much you can pack in a lunch when they don't have anywhere to warm things up. I've tried a thermos, but the only thing that really works for is soup; everything else often ends up soggy. Not to mention, during the school year I don't have the time to pack his lunch every night. I pack my husband's lunches, but I usually give him leftovers from dinner, and he can just warm them up in the microwave at work. My son doesn't have that luxury. I found out that not only am I paying almost 4 dollars a day for him to eat lunch, but that he doesn't get much for his money, and he says the food is almost always terrible. He refuses to drink the milk because it's skim milk. The school did a major budget cut for our school lunches, and it shows. He says most days he is lucky if he gets a sandwich and an apple, because by the time he gets to the front of the line, they're always out of everything. The high school used to have really good food. When I was there, I used to go to the snackline and buy a vegetable tray, a bag of chips, and a juice for about 3 dollars. I was given 20 dollars a week and could use it however I wanted for lunch. I used to save the majority of it for egg roll day on Friday because we had the best egg rolls. Our district has share carts in all of the schools, and my son seems to get most of his food from the share cart. None of the kids at the high school seem to want their apples or applesauce, so my son will walk up and get several of each to eat. It's required that they take a fruit or vegetable, and a lot of the time all that's left are apples and applesauce. My son says whenever there are fries or anything remotely good, it goes fast, and by the time he gets there, it's always gone. The irony is the person in charge of the food our schools get is my niece, whom I don't talk to anymore. She has never taken an Early Childhood nutrition class that I'm aware of. She went to school and got a business degree if I remember correctly. She has two kids in the district, so I'm not sure why she's ok with the offerings, maybe because she's not the one eating it. Most of our kids complain about the food; meanwhile, the adults in charge of what food comes to the school think the kids are getting a great meal. A few examples I can think of that make me question the school lunches are the week of pizza, as I call it. All week there are pizza-related menu items except for one day where there are chicken nuggets. Another one I question is the day of the week they have mozzarella sticks and carrots as a lunch. I know kids love pizza, but maybe spread it out. I have had kids who told me they were sick of pizza because of how many different ways they offered it in one week. One of the weekly options they have for C. lunch is something they can get every single day: yogurt, graham crackers, or corn bread, depending on what is available, and a cheese stick. It is not remotely filling, and our kids always end up hungry later, and the irony is they offer it at the middle and high school too. I know how much my kid can eat, and I can tell you that it will not fill my 15-year-old; it doesn't even fill up most of our kids after 1st grade. If my niece ever did take an ECE nutrition class, I highly doubt she'd ever think this menu was the way to go. I did take an ECE nutrition class and I was responsible for making both a daycare lunch menu and a menu for older kids. I was graded on that assignment.