OAK PARK : District May Have to Keep Lunch Supplier

The Oak Park Unified School District may not have alternatives to an unpopular school lunch program, Food Services Director Virginia Leigh told school board members this week.

Although she said lunch sales have plummeted since the district began offering meals from Preferred Meal Systems of Chicago, other companies may be uninterested or unable to bid on the contract for next year. The contract will be rebid this summer.

Preferred Meal Systems prepares lunches in the Chicago area and trucks them frozen to schools throughout the country. The system was tested at Oak Hills Elementary School in the 1991-92 school year and expanded to the district’s four major schools this year.

At Brookside Elementary School, less than 18% of children ate the school lunches this year compared with 28% in 1990-91, Leigh said. She said the total number of lunches served this year is less than 40,000, compared to 62,202 lunches served last school year.

But Leigh said the quality of the lunches is not as big a problem as the menu choices.

“I don’t know if anyone else is providing a meal system that is as thorough as we’re getting from Preferred Meal Systems,” Leigh said. “My personal opinion is to stay with Preferred for the time being.”

The Oak Park school district is not large enough to make a central kitchen financially feasible, Leigh said. She said the district pays 89 cents for every Preferred Meal Systems lunch and 15 cents for a carton of milk, which are sold to students for $2.

Board member Pat Kavulic said the district should consider establishing a central kitchen despite the cost.

“We work very hard at feeding kids’ minds,” Kavulic said, “We should put some effort into feeding their bodies.”