Food is one of the basic elements required to sustain life and it is therefore no surprise that the debate over PAUSD’s food service program in has become the recent focus of the district. The food service program is in need of reworking which includes a change in the structure of lunch service and how it operates.

According to the Palo Alto Weekly, the program has a deficit of $600,000 and is only used by 13 percent of district students. Because of the high costs and low participation, the school board is forced to come up with a solution. Some members have suggested cutting the program altogether or charging more for meals.

Neither of these ideas is satisfactory and will only cause more problems. Raising prices will surely reduce participation, most drastically in the high schools, which according to the Weekly, have become the source of the greatest loss of revenue. Many students will turn to lunches from home instead of purchasing school food. Although it is not bad for kids to bring their own lunch, doing so would not aid the food program.

Elimination of the food program is also not a feasible option. Many students rely on the lunch at school to provide a nutritious lunch, especially students in the National School Lunch Program (NLSP). Six percent of the district’s students participate in this program, which gives students of low-income families free or reduced price lunches. Other students who are not in the NSLP but don’t have the economic ability to spend large amounts of money to buy lunch at Town and Country would also be hurt by the cutting of the food program.

Although Paly is lucky enough to have Town and Country, Gunn High School has no such option and the lunch program is heavily used. One option that came up to increase revenue involved closing the high school campuses. Luckily, the School Board quickly dismissed the idea of closing the high school campuses as a way to force kids to buy lunch because they knew it would be very unpopular with students.

The school district could, instead of raising prices or cutting the program, make some cost efficient changes. A poll could be taken each day in the elementary schools and possibly the middle schools to determine how many students will buy lunch that day. That way only the needed amount of food would be delivered to the school. According to the Weekly, more than $100,000 dollars a year in food is thrown out by the district, needlessly adding to the deficit.

One system that is being looked at by the district is to implement a ‘grab and go’ lunch system at the high schools. It would involve students buying bag lunches instead of hot lunches, overall reducing costs and preparation time. One worry that came out of this involves labor.

With less work involved in the ‘grab and go’ lunches, there may be a need to lay off some district food service workers. Although laying off people is never good, it may be necessary to get the district on track. According to Travis Young regional vice-president for Chartwells (the district’s food provider)in an interview to the Weekly, 76 cents out of every dollar in revenue is spent on labor. Our labor spending is almost double the national average.

It would be a last resort but the district should not dismiss the idea of cutting back on food service to make the system more effective and cost efficient. We must turn this system around, even at the cost of sacrificing some employee positions.

The whole system needs to be reworked. Pre-ordering lunches, ‘grab and go’, and other methods would all help slow the deficit. But what is most important is that the school board act and do something constructive about the issue which they have attempted to do. The quicker we act and make changes, the sooner we can begin recovery and the less the deficit grows.