Anonymous
Post 07/18/2016 09:32     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We began PK3 last year at at Title 1 school last year and packed lunch. Kid comes home one day and says all of the pink (white) kids pack lunch and the brown (black) kids get free lunch together. I went in and talked to the teacher, who did confirm that there was a perfect racial split for packed vs school lunch in the classroom, which also meant they sat by race since the teacher just served the free lunch at one table to half the kids. I talked with other parents, we stopped packing lunch, and our 3 and 4 year olds stopped being segregated at lunch time. I don't know if the food was great, but he never came home hungry and I hate the dynamic we had set up.



Your choice, but it's not good enough for my family. The dynamic that's been set up is that some people don't care enough to provide their children with a healthy lunch. Somehow it's complicated to make a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with lettuce and tomato. It's too expensive to buy fresh fruit or applesauce. Yogurt is too time-consuming to grab out of the freezer and put in a lunch bag.

I really hated it when the teachers at our Title I PS would give the breakfast to everyone - including my child. Hello? I already fed her at home and I DON'T WANT her learning to eat those unhealthy foods her classmates eat. I don't want her to be a part of that fat culture.

Yuck. Ultimately, it was another reason that made it so much easier for us to switch to an HRC when she got in.


+1. This food is not good enough for any child. DCPS has created this ugly dynamic by trying to feed poor children crappy food. I would pack lunch for all of them if I could. But requiring all kids to eat poor quality food cannot be the answer.
Anonymous
Post 07/18/2016 09:25     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:We began PK3 last year at at Title 1 school last year and packed lunch. Kid comes home one day and says all of the pink (white) kids pack lunch and the brown (black) kids get free lunch together. I went in and talked to the teacher, who did confirm that there was a perfect racial split for packed vs school lunch in the classroom, which also meant they sat by race since the teacher just served the free lunch at one table to half the kids. I talked with other parents, we stopped packing lunch, and our 3 and 4 year olds stopped being segregated at lunch time. I don't know if the food was great, but he never came home hungry and I hate the dynamic we had set up.



Your choice, but it's not good enough for my family. The dynamic that's been set up is that some people don't care enough to provide their children with a healthy lunch. Somehow it's complicated to make a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with lettuce and tomato. It's too expensive to buy fresh fruit or applesauce. Yogurt is too time-consuming to grab out of the freezer and put in a lunch bag.

I really hated it when the teachers at our Title I PS would give the breakfast to everyone - including my child. Hello? I already fed her at home and I DON'T WANT her learning to eat those unhealthy foods her classmates eat. I don't want her to be a part of that fat culture.

Yuck. Ultimately, it was another reason that made it so much easier for us to switch to an HRC when she got in.
Anonymous
Post 07/18/2016 07:55     Subject: Re:Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Kids choose. They look at the menu and tell us what day they are interested in getting school lunch. There is always a veggie option and our school doesn't serve pork. On the other days we make their lunches with their input. Kids are 7 and 5 and soon will start making their own lunches, with assistance.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 21:55     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:We began PK3 last year at at Title 1 school last year and packed lunch. Kid comes home one day and says all of the pink (white) kids pack lunch and the brown (black) kids get free lunch together. I went in and talked to the teacher, who did confirm that there was a perfect racial split for packed vs school lunch in the classroom, which also meant they sat by race since the teacher just served the free lunch at one table to half the kids. I talked with other parents, we stopped packing lunch, and our 3 and 4 year olds stopped being segregated at lunch time. I don't know if the food was great, but he never came home hungry and I hate the dynamic we had set up.


Ugh, that sucks. But why did the teacher have them sit like that? Is it really so hard to move a plate from one table to another?

Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 21:09     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
We began PK3 last year at at Title 1 school last year and packed lunch. Kid comes home one day and says all of the pink (white) kids pack lunch and the brown (black) kids get free lunch together. I went in and talked to the teacher, who did confirm that there was a perfect racial split for packed vs school lunch in the classroom, which also meant they sat by race since the teacher just served the free lunch at one table to half the kids. I talked with other parents, we stopped packing lunch, and our 3 and 4 year olds stopped being segregated at lunch time. I don't know if the food was great, but he never came home hungry and I hate the dynamic we had set up.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 20:14     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our teacher in a similar school asked everyone to eat the school lunch.


Sorry but I'm not compromising my kid's health to make the teacher's life easier.


You sound fun!



I agree PP was being incredibly melodramatic about it, but I agree that it is and should be the parents choice whether to pack something. A teacher pressuring the kid to eat the school or pressuring a parent not to pack is out of line.


Eh, when you enroll in a school, you are fitting your kid into a school culture. Meals are a huge part of a culture. It's not out of line for a PK teacher to want to keep a culture of class family meals. I can see parents embracing this in other contexts. Does't everyone always think the family meals at creches in Paris are so cute and superior?


I don't think culture of a school extends anywhere near this far, especially at a public school. There are any number of reasons a parent wouldn't want his kid eating school meals - allergies, religious restrictions, health issues short of allergies, parental preference for generally healthier foods, parental preference to give kids foods from their background/ethnicity (at least some of the time), etc.

I would hope no teacher would push back on allergies or religious restrictions (although I bet some would be less accepting of a kid keeping kosher or halal), but even the other things are the sort of decisions that parents can make for their young child. One should not have to compromise on those things in the name of school culture.


yes, god forbid your child sit down to a meal with all the other kids! must ... be ... special!!


So the kid who is allergic to milk should have to have Mac and cheese in the name of unity? The Jew or Muslim should have to have pork to appease the teacher's whim? The immigrants from Korea (or anywhere else) should be told that they can't give food from their background to their kid? There is nothing "special" about any of this and only someone who is a majority, doesn't have health issues and is generally an ass, would think otherwise. These kids absolute can and should sit down with their classmates, but that doesn't mean that they should be forced to eat meals their parents don't approve of.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 19:58     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our teacher in a similar school asked everyone to eat the school lunch.


Sorry but I'm not compromising my kid's health to make the teacher's life easier.


You sound fun!



I agree PP was being incredibly melodramatic about it, but I agree that it is and should be the parents choice whether to pack something. A teacher pressuring the kid to eat the school or pressuring a parent not to pack is out of line.


Eh, when you enroll in a school, you are fitting your kid into a school culture. Meals are a huge part of a culture. It's not out of line for a PK teacher to want to keep a culture of class family meals. I can see parents embracing this in other contexts. Does't everyone always think the family meals at creches in Paris are so cute and superior?


I don't think culture of a school extends anywhere near this far, especially at a public school. There are any number of reasons a parent wouldn't want his kid eating school meals - allergies, religious restrictions, health issues short of allergies, parental preference for generally healthier foods, parental preference to give kids foods from their background/ethnicity (at least some of the time), etc.

I would hope no teacher would push back on allergies or religious restrictions (although I bet some would be less accepting of a kid keeping kosher or halal), but even the other things are the sort of decisions that parents can make for their young child. One should not have to compromise on those things in the name of school culture.


yes, god forbid your child sit down to a meal with all the other kids! must ... be ... special!!
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 19:56     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our teacher in a similar school asked everyone to eat the school lunch.


Sorry but I'm not compromising my kid's health to make the teacher's life easier.


You sound fun!



I agree PP was being incredibly melodramatic about it, but I agree that it is and should be the parents choice whether to pack something. A teacher pressuring the kid to eat the school or pressuring a parent not to pack is out of line.


Eh, when you enroll in a school, you are fitting your kid into a school culture. Meals are a huge part of a culture. It's not out of line for a PK teacher to want to keep a culture of class family meals. I can see parents embracing this in other contexts. Does't everyone always think the family meals at creches in Paris are so cute and superior?


I don't think culture of a school extends anywhere near this far, especially at a public school. There are any number of reasons a parent wouldn't want his kid eating school meals - allergies, religious restrictions, health issues short of allergies, parental preference for generally healthier foods, parental preference to give kids foods from their background/ethnicity (at least some of the time), etc.

I would hope no teacher would push back on allergies or religious restrictions (although I bet some would be less accepting of a kid keeping kosher or halal), but even the other things are the sort of decisions that parents can make for their young child. One should not have to compromise on those things in the name of school culture.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 17:54     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:I always pack. There is far more variety in what I pack than what is given at school lunch. My food is also so much healthier. It's really not that hard to pack -- I do it every morning, as my kid is usually at summer camps that require me to pack lunch as well.




This. Plus, it's worth it to get the child involved in making healthy choices.

School lunches don't seem to have any balance. There are the supposedly healthy ones that the kids won't eat (no matter how "healthy" the lunch is, if children throw it in the trash, they're choosing the unhealthy choice of going hungry), then there's the disgusting stuff that DCPS serves.

BTW, do you suppose Millennials need to buy $5 Starbucks because they've never learned to do anything for themselves? What a shock they can't pay off their student debt for years of a degree in "film theory". It looks like one more outcome of Mommy and Daddy arranging everything, so that snowflake doesn't need to do anything at all.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2016 16:20     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Chartwells is gone - and replaced with Sodexho. Some of the requirements that Chartwells had to adhere to related to nutritional content have been relaxed.

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/568578.page
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2016 22:35     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our teacher in a similar school asked everyone to eat the school lunch.


Sorry but I'm not compromising my kid's health to make the teacher's life easier.


You sound fun!



I agree PP was being incredibly melodramatic about it, but I agree that it is and should be the parents choice whether to pack something. A teacher pressuring the kid to eat the school or pressuring a parent not to pack is out of line.


Eh, when you enroll in a school, you are fitting your kid into a school culture. Meals are a huge part of a culture. It's not out of line for a PK teacher to want to keep a culture of class family meals. I can see parents embracing this in other contexts. Does't everyone always think the family meals at creches in Paris are so cute and superior?
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2016 20:24     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our teacher in a similar school asked everyone to eat the school lunch.


Sorry but I'm not compromising my kid's health to make the teacher's life easier.


You sound fun!



I agree PP was being incredibly melodramatic about it, but I agree that it is and should be the parents choice whether to pack something. A teacher pressuring the kid to eat the school or pressuring a parent not to pack is out of line.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2016 20:11     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
I always pack. There is far more variety in what I pack than what is given at school lunch. My food is also so much healthier. It's really not that hard to pack -- I do it every morning, as my kid is usually at summer camps that require me to pack lunch as well.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2016 19:52     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
Our kids eat a very healthy diet at home- tons of veggies, whole grains, very little refined sugar, etc., and they eat school lunch. I wish the food served at the school was better and sourced locally, but it's okay. My kids' teachers tell me my kids do a good job eating it. And there is a heck of a lot more variety in the school lunch than what I would send them with. Our lives are infinitely easier with school lunch, and my semi-picky eaters have learned to eat a wider variety of foods. I can live with the compromises.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2016 19:17     Subject: Do you pack your PK3 kid's lunch?
And who is the provider for these lunches?