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Free Lunch?

March 28, 1999

The Washington Post
Sunday, March 28, 1999; Page B02

Hard to Swallow:
The Scandal in the School Lunch Program Isn't About

At first glance, the facts seem to tell the story: Last week, the
principal of Alice Deal Junior High School in Northwest Washington was
placed on administrative leave with pay for the unauthorized selling of
pizzas to his students. The D.C. inspector general said the principal,
Reginald Moss, had used the $44,000 in "profits" for staff stipends,
Christmas gifts, landscaping and other school-related expenses.

But based on my research into the nation's school lunch programs, I
doubt this is the whole story. Senior administrators were well aware of
such pizza sales at schools throughout the District. So is this a
question of abuse? Or should we be applauding the entrepreneurship of
D.C. principals?

Either way, I suggest the real villain here is the $5.8 billion federal
school lunch program, which is increasingly burdened by rigid rules,
riven by special-interest groups and almost immune to criticism. The
program now delivers meals that many kids do not want to eat. Who can
blame principals--who want their students to eat lunch without leaving
the school grounds--for offering an alternative? And if these
off-the-books food sales can generate "profits" for other school needs,
so much the better.

Three years ago, I visited a D.C. high school as part of my study. A
senior administrator from the lunch program accompanied me. Although I
was a stranger, members of the school staff told me quite
matter-of-factly that the principal's office sold pizza and other foods
every day and that the "profits" were used to fund other school
activities. But I am getting ahead of the story.

I arrived about noon. More than 100 students were lined up in the
cafeteria waiting for lunch. The line moved slowly because only five
people were working behind the counter. About 45 minutes later, the last
student was served. I asked why there were not more servers to move the
line faster and was told that it would be too expensive. The servers had
originally been volunteers and part-time workers. But over the years,
that had changed because of union and political pressure. The servers
were paid between $10 and $14.50 an hour (more than equivalent to
private-sector pay) for seven hours of work, although they were needed
for about three hours a day. As one of our guides put it, "We are
running an employment program, not a feeding program."

From a distance, the food had looked quite appetizing, if a bit heavy:
fried chicken, chicken nuggets, meatball subs, french-fried potato
curls, bright yellow corn bread, macaroni and cheese, and green beans in
butter. A salad bar was also available, but the choices were
limited--mostly brown lettuce, some beets and various
mayonnaise-smothered salads.

I sampled some of the food, which turned out to be so greasy and salty
that it was hard to eat. When I said something negative about the taste,
I was told "that's how our kids like it." I don't think so. As I found
out from a former school cook, the problem was careless preparation. For
example, the frying oil was not kept hot enough, so the food absorbed
oil the way a sponge soaks up water. Perhaps that's why some of the kids
with free-lunch tickets (given to lower-income families) were selling
them for 25 cents.

But many students didn't come to the cafeteria at all. They headed for
the principal's office--where, I was told, pizza, hot dogs and various
snacks were available. They were sold there to avoid any entanglement
with federal school lunch rules. I was told--proudly, I might add--that
the sales revenue was used to buy sports equipment and other school
items. The senior administrator from the central office was standing
next to me at the time.

D.C. students are not the only youngsters who pass up school lunches.
Nationally, about 56 percent of students eat what the schools offer. The
percentage of high schoolers, who have more choices than younger
students, is even lower--about 40 percent. In surveys, the prime reason
students give is that they "do not like the food."

New federal school nutrition regulations, although well-meaning, have
made things worse. In recent years, federal officials have tried to
transform the lunch program from one that makes sure poor children get a
nutritious meal to a paternalistic effort to reshape the eating habits
of American children. Their desire to improve the nutritional
content--and lower the fat and sodium--is laudable. But such meals are
much more difficult to prepare, and unless they are done with great
skill, can be simply unappetizing to many young people--even those not
brought up on McDonald's, Pizza Hut and other fast foods. As any parent
who has tried knows, young people cannot be forced to eat foods they do
not like, especially if they are allowed to leave the school grounds to
find alternatives.

So, when principals sell pizza and hot dogs, they are responding to
strong student preferences. If they do not, the young people in their
care will leave school to buy lunch (if they are old enough and it is an
open school), bring lunch from home or not eat at all.

One way around the federal nutrition rules is to add so-called "a la
carte" choices. All over the country, principals are putting such items
(commercially prepared pizza, for example) on their lunch menus. Why
didn't Deal's principal simply add pizza to his school's a la carte
menu? Probably because he thought that doing so would have required him
to funnel the proceeds back into D.C.'s bloated school lunch program,
thus losing an important source of money for the other pressing needs he

So it is understandable that principals around the country have brought
in food from the outside. But breaking or bending the rules is not a
good solution. Procedures tend to be informal: no competitive bidding,
no written contracts and incomplete bookkeeping. Worse, providing
alternative food choices takes the pressure off the school system to
improve its basic meal service.

In 1995, congressional Republicans tried to revamp the federal school
lunch program. They got their ears pinned back as their opponents
successfully portrayed them as willing to let poor children go hungry.
The Republicans learned their lesson: The school lunch program has
become a sacred cow whose problems cannot be openly discussed. That's
too bad, because we need a new recipe for federal food aid.

I don't know whether Deal's principal broke the rules or the law, but I
do know this: Many school lunch programs don't deliver a meal that kids
will eat. I hope this larger "scandal" becomes a part of the continuing

* * * * *
Douglas Besharov is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research and a professor at the University
of Maryland's School of Public Affairs. Peter Germanis helped prepare
this article.

c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company


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