Schools take a stand against the ‘Uber cafeteria’
SILVER SPRING, MD.— Students in middle and high schools across America thought they had found a way around cafeteria “cuisine” and boring brownbag lunches: just hit up delivery services such as DoorDash, Grubhub or Uber Eats and get takeout food sent to their schools.
Now, citing security and nuisance concerns, school districts are cracking down.
“The other day, a student asked me if he could get food delivered, and I said, ‘No!’ ” said Leslie Blaha, a science teacher at Montgomery Blair High School who was standing in line at a Chipotle Mexican Grill across the street from the school.
“If they get it delivered to the school, the main office sends it back,” Blaha said. “We can’t have food coming from an unknown source that we don’t know what’s in it.”
The fight over lunch deliveries may seem minor, but the easy availability of fast food is no joke to nutritionists — especially amid the Trump administration’s drive to overturn school lunch standards put in place during the Obama administration.
Sarah Reinhardt, food systems and health analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said allowing students to order restaurant food for lunch means “there is no one looking out for their nutritional needs.
Pati Nash, public information officer for the Red Clay Consolidated School District in Delaware, said food deliveries at several schools were becoming “disruptive.” The bottom line, Nash said: “Random people delivering Thai food is not part of our safety plan.”
The school district in Montgomery County, Md., which includes Blair High, has banned food deliveries districtwide, with the exception of a handful of schools with “open lunch” policies.
“Students were going to (class) late and saying, ‘My food got here late,’ and we said, ‘Nice try,’ ” district spokesperson Gboyinde Onijala said.
“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Onijala added. “You have dozens of students coming down to the office every day and they have to be called to pick up their lunch.”
The School Nutrition Association, a professional organization representing more than 58,000 school lunch workers, supports more flexibility than the Obama rules allowed on whole grains and sodium.
But Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the group, said fast-food lunches undermine nutritional standards and harm students’ health.