The school to prison pipeline is a very real thing. It permeates every aspect of inner city public education, from underpaid and overworked teachers, to completely underfunded classrooms and lunchrooms. High school students at Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois are fed up with being underfed. When Chicago decided to make all school lunches free with government subsidies a couple of years ago we were all excited and happy—except, many on the left were less than happy with the “compromise” of Aramark getting an $80-$100 million contract to “cater” the food. There were promises of exciting organic salads that a contract with Aramark would afford the students of Chicago’s Public Schools (CPS). But there was also this:
For all the trouble we encountered getting the data, we found that, at least on paper, CPS appears to be operating within the latest U.S. requirements for calories, fat and salt – though it should be noted the federal guidelines still allow a high amount of salt in the school meals. What’s more, there’s a footnote in the documents: “Ingredients and menu items are subject to change or substitution without notice.” CPS explains that sometimes schools run out of certain foods, so menu items are swapped out.
Those “footnotes” seem to have been employed and CPS students are sick of it. Instead of free lunches raising the number of Chicago children eating, the numbers have dropped by almost one million. How come? Kids don’t like the shitty substances on cardboard plates that passes for food in Chicago’s public schools.
As it stands today, the students are presented with a menu of mostly processed fast food dominated by pizza, burgers and chicken patties. And Roosevelt civics student Duyen Ho believes this could create problems for their long-term health.
“The fact that we eat fast food every day is going to affect us in the long term,” said Ho. “It’s going to affect us a lot.”
The kids are going to social media and making a ruckus. Their website The School Lunch Project: Culinary Denial provides a simple explanation of what they are up against.
This site is created and maintained by Roosevelt High School Civics students in Chicago, IL. In Civics we are working on project based learning. We brainstormed a list of potential issues to work on, narrowed the list to three, and finally voted to work on improving school lunch.
And they are taking aim at Aramark, the company that got the privatization bid to feed Chicago’s children.
Before privatization of lunch, our school cafeteria served the community at large and turned a profit for the school. We learned that Aramark is a company with a laundry list of corruption and scandals a mile long. They may not know how to keep us happy, but they certainly keep their investors happy.
They’ve also begun an Instagram account with glorious images of the food they are served. Like this thing Aramark calls “hamburger meat”.
Why is there plastic in their hamburger? That. Is. Crazy. If a parent was found to have been feeding their child plastics, even out of negligence—they would be, justifiably, suspended from parenting pending evaluations, etc. Ask social media and ye shall be answered:
The School Lunch Project website details these ingredients, shares links to research materials (including some written by this reporter) and offers a gallery of sometimes graphic lunch photos. So far the site has gained attention and comments from parents, students, teachers and a even a supportive CPS principal.
[...]
Aramark, for its part, says it became aware of the website through social media and is “looking into it with CPS and the principal.” But the company said it had not heard about the specific complaints listed on the site from staff or students directly.
Here’s a complaint Aramark can log into their files: You are a bunch of greedy liars.
Still, this week the Roosevelt students plan to take their protest beyond the online world. They’re planning a schoolwide lesson on school food Wednesday followed by lunch boycotts among upperclassman Thursday and Friday. Next Monday, they say, they plan to take the lunch boycott schoolwide, and even to partnering schools.
CPS and Aramark get a $3.15 federal payment (that they share) for each school lunch a student takes, so thousands of students brown-bagging it for even a day could cost them several thousand dollars.
[my emphasis]
The more you learn about Chicago and how much activism is going on there, the more happiness I have for the progressives of this country who have never disappeared but now can share their stories without traditional media gatekeepers.
You can listen to WBEZ’s report on the boycott below the fold.