School Lunch Savings

Our school district recently published the upcoming lunch menu for September, when school starts, including the price for lunch–nearly $3. A carton of chocolate milk? 75 cents. I know that I’m dating myself when I say this, but I can remember spending 75 cents for an entire hot lunch meal and 25 cents for a carton of chocolate milk. (Chocolate milk was considered to be an upgrade over basic white milk, which cost only 15 cents.)

Last year the school district debuted a prepaid plan, whereby parents can put money into their kids’ lunch money account, and all the kids needed to do to buy lunch was make their selections and then tell the cashier their user ID–thankfully not their Social Security number. Then like Big Brother himself–or should I say Big Mother–the school would email your kid’s statement at the end of the month to show you what she bought when and how much she spent.

It’s eye-opening to get to spy on your kids’ food choices this way, especially when you can uncover one child’s Little Debbie snack cake obsession (at a buck a pop) or you other child’s habit of saying “Popsicles on me,” and then proceeding to buy 10 of her little friends dessert. No wonder my kids were each blowing through so much lunch money month.

Well, the jig is up, now that they know I can spy on their food choices and because of our new-found budget. Also, a few years ago, I worked as a recess volunteer at the elementary school, and I was appalled at how much food the kids threw away each day. I don’t even want to see what a week’s trash heap looks like.

This year, I figure, if my kids don’t buy lunch and I pack their lunches in as little disposable packaging as possible, then we’ll be saving money and my kids won’t be contributing too much garbage to the school district’s trash kitty.

I’ve already talked about our desire to do away with store-bought, bottled water and use reusable bottles for drinks instead. Those reusable bottles will definitely be in my daughters’ lunch boxes.

I’m hoping that as soon as I start packing lunches in two weeks, my older daughter will stay true to her expressed desire to take grilled chicken and romaine lettuce for lunch (man, she really is becoming a teen if she wants to bring salad for lunch! And to think just a few years ago I had to bribe her or trick her into eating anything green!). We can pack salad in reusable Tupperware containers. My younger daughter? Well, she would just assume buy salad bar at school so maybe I can convince her that we can have as good of a salad bar at home, where it’s all you can eat (and pack) and free.

Now about the school’s trash: perhaps it’s time to put them in touch with a food-for-the-poor organization like Philabundance and see if I can’t convince the science teachers to get the kids and cafeteria workers to start composting food scraps. I’ll bet these measures could easily cut their garbage output in half.