What's for lunch? Stigma sandwich
Chula Vista kids with cafeteria bills get cheese, bread By Chris Moran UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 1, 2007 The cheese sandwich has been a remarkably effective collections notice in Chula Vista's elementary schools. When schools give kids no lunch choice but cheese, parents pay what they owe. Lunch costs $1.50 a day, but the past-due bills aren't small change. Four years ago, Chula Vista parents had run up a lunch tab of $285,000. "It's a problem across the country," Dennis Doyle, Chula Vista's assistant superintendent, told an audience of principals and parents this week at a monthly meeting as they noshed on roast beef and turkey sandwiches. "How do you make sure that you're not letting children go hungry, and yet at the same time you don't end up with a $300,000 debt?" The answer in Chula Vista is the cheese sandwich. It's the centerpiece of what's known as the "alternate meal," which also includes milk and a trip to the salad bar. In 2003, the year American cheese on wheat bread made its entry as an entree, the debt shrank by more than $100,000. It stood at $67,800 according to the district's most recent figure. As a student's account balance dwindles and dips into the red, the school sends a letter home, calls the parents and gives the child a verbal reminder to tell Mom and Dad to send in some money. When parents fall three meals behind, their child finds a check mark on his personalized lunch card when he picks it up at the beginning of the cafeteria line. That tells him he has no choice but cheese.
June 1, 2007
The cheese sandwich has been a remarkably effective collections notice in Chula Vista's elementary schools. When schools give kids no lunch choice but cheese, parents pay what they owe.
Lunch costs $1.50 a day, but the past-due bills aren't small change. Four years ago, Chula Vista parents had run up a lunch tab of $285,000.
"It's a problem across the country," Dennis Doyle, Chula Vista's assistant superintendent, told an audience of principals and parents this week at a monthly meeting as they noshed on roast beef and turkey sandwiches. "How do you make sure that you're not letting children go hungry, and yet at the same time you don't end up with a $300,000 debt?"
The answer in Chula Vista is the cheese sandwich. It's the centerpiece of what's known as the "alternate meal," which also includes milk and a trip to the salad bar. In 2003, the year American cheese on wheat bread made its entry as an entree, the debt shrank by more than $100,000. It stood at $67,800 according to the district's most recent figure.
As a student's account balance dwindles and dips into the red, the school sends a letter home, calls the parents and gives the child a verbal reminder to tell Mom and Dad to send in some money.
When parents fall three meals behind, their child finds a check mark on his personalized lunch card when he picks it up at the beginning of the cafeteria line. That tells him he has no choice but cheese.
The article is quick to point out that this only applies to kids whose parents can afford to pay-- if you are from a low-income family, the cheese-sandwich method does not affect you.
(I have some cookbooks with WWII British rationing recipes. The cheese-on-wheat-bread, salad, and milk combination actually sounds similar to the "Oslo meal," which was touted as a good breakfast.)
