Serving Nourishing Food to Students is Not an Easy Task

It’s a big job to plan, purchase, prepare, and serve nourishing food to 8,000 school children every day, but it’s a job Edward Carelli, Food Service director for the Kingston City Schools Consolidated, relishes. His main concern is not to merely provide nutritional meals, but nutritional meals that students will actually want to eat.

“It’s not all cut and dried,” Carelli says, sitting at his desk at J. Watson Bailey Middle School where the District’s Central Kitchen is located. “You can put the healthiest food out and students won’t eat it. We have to serve foods they’ll eat, that they’ll relate to.”

Carelli is a 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a certified New York State Dietary Manager. He and his staff of 90 provide more than one million breakfasts and lunches annually in all of the 14 school buildings within the District (11 elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school). On an average day, the District serves more than 4,200 full-course lunches and 1,200 breakfasts. Hot and cold food bars in the high school and other lunch foods also are offered for students who prefer to purchase items a la carte.

Research shows that a child with an empty stomach is lethargic, irritable, and not able to participate fully in learning experiences. On the other hand, a well-nourished student will generally have better attendance, be more attentive, and have more energy to cope with the ups and downs of a typical school day.

To make sure students have nutritionally balanced meals, the District participates in the National School Lunch Program, governed by Federal and State regulations. The program requires that meals provide key nutrients and calories, according to U.S. Dietary Guidelines, with a conscientious effort made to reduce the amount of salt, fat, and sugar in the students’ diets while increasing fiber and complex carbohydrates. A diet with 30 percent or less of calories from fat and less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat is recommended. In addition, lunches must provide, on average over each school week, at least one-third of the daily Recommended Dietary Allowances for protein, iron, calcium, and vitamins A and C. The District’s Food Service staff is responsible for creating menus that meet these guidelines.

“Under the Traditional Food-Based Menu Planning Approach,” Carelli says, “we must comply with specific component and quantity requirements by offering five food items from four food components: meat or a meat alternative, vegetables and/or fruits, grains and breads, and milk. Portion sizes are established by age and grade groups.”

Working within this framework, Carelli strives to serve food items that encourage students to participate in the program. Pizza is a favorite, he says, as are tacos and chicken nuggets. Students are encouraged to select at least one fruit and one vegetable or two fruits and two vegetables along with their entrees. Occasionally a treat, like a donut or pretzel, is offered with a meal. At the hot and cold salad bars, students’ choices include chicken, spaghetti, sausage and peppers, assorted freshly cooked vegetables, tossed salads, homemade fat-free dressings, and cold salads that are prepared daily. The Italian food bar, “A Taste of Italy,” at the Kingston High School, with its mozzarella sticks, pasta primavera, and Tuscany bread, is also popular.

The food served in the elementary and middle schools begins at the Central Kitchen and is transported by three vans to 13 of the 14 school buildings. The meals travel by a dumbwaiter system to the J. Watson Bailey cafeteria, up one level from the Central Kitchen. The high school staff prepares its food on site.

“We do the intense preparation here at the Central Kitchen,” Carelli says. “Then the food is transported, either frozen or chilled, to the finishing or satellite kitchens at the individual schools where it’s heated to the proper temperatures and served.”

Carelli has been running Kingston City Schools Consolidated Food Services, a $2 million operation, since 1995. Before that, he worked in a variety of food service venues including 10 years at Vassar College and several years with the New Paltz and Poughkeepsie School Districts.

To compete with brown bag lunches, nearby fast food (at the High School), and vending machines, prices are kept as low as possible: breakfast is $.75 and lunch is $1.65 in the elementary schools, $1.90 at the high schools. Individual items purchased a la carte are priced higher, in accordance with State guidelines, to encourage participation in the more nutritionally balanced meal program. The District offers parents a variety of payment methods to make meal purchase convenient, including pre-payment. Carelli and his staff also encourage parents to check on their eligibility for free or reduced price meals for their children.

Carelli is always exploring ways he can help students get a nourishing meal. In the fall of 1999, he eliminated the practice of charging students who qualified for reduced price meals $.25 at the cash register. Because the State reimburses the District at different rates for families of different income levels, it was believed that the $.25 charge was necessary to cover costs. Students qualifying for free meals or students paying full price were required only to have a lunch ticket.

“Many times the parents simply couldn’t afford the 25 cents,” Carelli said. “And others didn’t want to be identified as students receiving financial assistance.” Once the $.25 charge was removed, along with the stigma of being identified as needing reduced priced lunches, more students were able and willing to get in line for lunch. “Our goal was to increase the availability of the meal program to lower income students without causing a financial deficit to the program,” Carelli says. “Once we did away with the 25-cent fee, we brought in more students.”

With more students in line at the cafeteria door, Carelli needed more food; the increase in food volume purchases resulted in lower food costs per unit. More students also brought in more money at the cash register. But the most dramatic increase is in the number of meals served to students qualifying for reduced price meals, which jumped from 19,769 during 1998-1999 to 47,205 in the 2000-2001 school year. For implementing this change, Kingston City Schools Consolidated Food Services received a “Best Practice” award from the New York State Education Department in 2001.

Installing some new kitchen equipment and a new computer system is next on the agenda for Carelli; new steamers and prep tables will make the kitchen more efficient and a new computer system will streamline everything from daily meal counts to the processing of required State and Federal reports.

“It’s an ongoing upgrade,” Carelli says. “With the goal to feed more students .”