Aging School Kitchens Undermine Healthy Meal Preparation
By John Rosales
It was food delivery day at Glen Landing Middle School in Blackwood, New Jersey, and the 42-year-old walk-in freezer went kaput. Again.“The food delivery we were supposed to receive that Thursday had to be delivered to another school,” says Marge Vallieu, a 22-year district employee, the last 17 as Glen Landing’s cafeteria manager. “The food was then picked up and brought back to me on Monday.”
Fortunately for the 100 students who ate breakfast and 350 who enjoyed lunch at Glen Landing that Thursday and Friday, a maintenance worker kept the freezer running with duct tape, glue and a prayer until he could install much-needed new parts. Vallieu says Glen Landing still has most of the original kitchen equipment from when the school was built in 1971.
“The repairman said the freezer should have been replaced 10 years ago,” says Vallieu, a member of the New Jersey Education Association. “That’s not going to happen unless we hit the lottery.”
According to Serving Healthy School Meals, a new report by the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project(KSHFP), some sort of financial windfall is needed by many schools in order to prepare and serve healthy foods efficiently. For example, only one in 10 school districts surveyed (12 percent) have the kitchen equipment needed to serve nutritious and appealing meals, with only 42 percent having a budget sufficient enough to purchase vital equipment.
To meet current dietary needs, according to the survey, schools need ovens to bake rather than fry foods; refrigerators to hold fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products; and proper infrastructure such as
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