Reply to My daughter is the only white girl in her grade: ask me anything

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, does your DD eat the school lunch? From reading this forum, I get the impression that most higher SES parents find DCPS lunches unacceptable, while most poorer kids will eat them, especially if the school is community eligible and meals are free. So this is another potential point of segregation within the school. I'm asking because we are about to start PK at a Title 1 school with very few white kids, and I intend to have my DD eat the school lunch since I assume most if not all kids in her class will.[/quote]

I'm glad you asked this question! It is something I care about a lot.

Yes, DD mostly eats the school lunch. I'm not thrilled about it. In PK, they ate family-style in the classroom, and I didn't want her to feel left out of what the other kids were eating - her teacher flat out told me that that is usually what happens and strongly encouraged me to let her eat the classroom lunch unless there were dietary restrictions that prohibited that. Last year was her first year in the cafeteria, and I tried to send lunch several times because she's a slow eater and lunch periods are so short, I was worried she wouldn't get enough food. She basically ate school lunch all year anyway. I'd send in lunch and it would come back mostly uneaten and then she'd report that she ate the whatever-was-being-served-in-the-cafeteria with everyone else. This year, they basically sign up for school lunch or home lunch a day in advance, so she decided that she would listen to the menu options and decide whether to pack a lunch accordingly.

Until this year, I was pretty pleased with the quality of the food being served at our school. This year, I am less confident because of the vendor chosen by DCPS and problems that have already arisen with that vendor. There should be menus available so you can make your own decisions, but one of the things that I really appreciated about our PK program was the family-style meals. I wish they still did it because I think it's really important that kids experience family meal times and integrate dining as a social experience, but I get why they're not doing it. I really hope that the food quality at our school doesn't go down the drain so that she can continue to pack lunch.[/quote]

The food quality has been pretty good on the first two days.

Signed -- high-SES parent who hates packing lunches.[/quote]

Good to know! First PP here and I also hate packing lunches, but aside from that, I don't want my child to be the only (non-hispanic!) white kid in the class who also doesn't participate in the family-style lunch. Thanks for your response, OP. I totally agree on the importance of sharing meals as a social experience. [/quote]

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