School Official Offers Plan Extending Fast-Food Services

It is a teen-ager’s culinary dream come true.

A Long Beach school official has come up with a plan that will allow sales of fast-food items such as pizza and hamburgers to continue on high school campuses. Fast-food sales also may be allowed occasionally at middle schools, beginning with the next school year.

Daily fast-food deliveries were started last fall at Lakewood and Millikan high schools, and students responded enthusiastically. At Jordan, Poly and Wilson high schools, pizza was delivered most Fridays.

Besides questioning the nutritional value of the fast-food items, educators pointed out that such sales violated state and local school regulations aimed at preventing competition with the schools’ food service operations.

But the new director of the school district’s food services, Frank Towers, has come up with a plan that at least appears to resolve the legal concerns. The school food service operations will take charge of purchasing and selling the fast-food items, thus eliminating potential competition between fast-food sales and school cafeterias.

There had been some concerns that the district’s food service division would lose money as a result of the fast-food sales, and cafeteria workers had said they were concerned that fast-food sales might eliminate some of their jobs. Fast-food items have been sold in student stores, with all profits going to student activity funds.

State and local regulations limited outside food sales on campus to four days a year. The limit mainly is to prevent competition with school cafeterias, which must be self-supporting, said Maria Balakshin, director of the state Department of Education’s division of child nutrition and food distribution services.

The fast-food meals will continue to be sold through the schools’ student stores rather than in the cafeteria, but the food service operation will split the profits with individual schools.

The new plan still has its critics, and even Towers himself said he is not completely satisfied.

“It’s not a magical answer to everything,” Towers said, adding that he would prefer that students eat the balanced meals prepared by cafeteria workers. But that is unrealistic, he said, because many teen-agers would rather hop in a car and leave campus for lunch than walk through a cafeteria line.

“If we don’t offer them something (like this), they’ll leave campus,” Towers said.

Eventually, Towers said, he would like to eliminate fast foods by having school cafeteria workers prepare the type of meals that students prefer. Towers said he wants each school to create a student group to advise him on the types of foods and services the teen-agers would like.

School board President Jenny Oropeza said this week she is concerned that fast-food sales will contribute to students’ poor eating habits, which later lead to high cholesterol levels and other problems.

“A McDonald’s hamburger, as an example, has so much salt and fat. . . . It’s terrible that we would be contributing to their health problems,” Oropeza said. McDonald’s representatives have called their food “extremely nutritious.”

Oropeza said that she hopes the district will move swiftly to improve the cafeterias’ food so that students won’t be tempted by fast foods.

Officials at Lakewood and Millikan also expressed concern over the decline in student-activity revenues that will result from Towers’ plan. Once the district’s food service branch contracts directly with fast-food outlets, the district and the schools will split the revenue generated. Until now, the schools ran the sales and kept the profits for student activities.

“I’m not terribly happy with it. I’d much rather have the full amount go to school activities,” said Bob Schnebeck, activities director at Millikan High School, which has generated about $25,000 in profits from the food sales since last September.

James Wickman, activities director at Lakewood High, said: “From what I understand in meeting with Mr. Towers, we don’t have much of a choice (because of local and state regulations.)

“Fifty percent of something is better than nothing,” he added.

While disagreeing on some aspects of the issue, school board members, school officials and district administrators agree that a primary concern is keeping students from leaving campus for lunch, thus reducing tardiness and safety problems.

“I would prefer,” Towers said, “to have students stay on campus and buy fast food then go off campus and buy fast food.”

BACKGROUND

In an attempt to keep students on campus during the lunch period, officials at Millikan and Lakewood high schools last fall began ordering hamburgers, pizza and other food from fast-food outlets. At Lakewood High, more than 1,000 of the school’s 3,400 students have been buying fast-food items every day. But some educators expressed concern that the fast-food sales were violating state and local school regulations.