Grand Prairie ISD parents express concern over school lunches
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – School lunches were not on the Grand Prairie ISD school board meeting agenda Thursday night but still, some parents showed up to express their disappointment with them. They said they are not nutritious.
"This is what they post on their website that they say that they're serving and in reality, it's this," said Edgar Suarez as he held a sign with photos of the two lunches.
He said he understands why his two kids are refusing to eat the lunches.
"It's outrageous," he said."If you're hungry, you're not going to concentrate. You're going to be thinking of what you want to eat when you get home."
He said Monday he attended the district's child nutrition advisory meeting to voice his concerns and met other parents with similar photos. Now, they're attending the school board meeting to speak during public comment.
"It needs to addressed," parent Cynthia Orozzo said. "It needs to be changed. Our kids deserve better."
A district spokesperson says at Thursday's meeting the district's food services management company and food services department listened to suggestions.
"They have already met several times to see what they can do to address those concerns,"
Sam Buchmeyer said. "There's always parameters that we do have to deal with and one of those we did explain at the meeting was we have government regulations that govern some of that and of course federal funds are tied to those things."
The district is taking all these variables into consideration.
"They want to go back and look at what they can do to improve or at least meet the expectations of parents," Buchmeyer said.
Alex Gonzales, who has two kids in the district and is a teacher, says she doesn't see anything wrong with lunches.
"It's kind of shocking and surprising that all this is happening," she said.
Suarez wants change.
"They got to switch providers, whoever is providing this, so that our kids can eat better and not worry about where their next meal is coming from," he said.
For parents who missed this week's meeting, there will be another opportunity to speak about lunches in January.
