On November 17, parents showed up at a Grand Prairie ISD school board meeting to express their concerns regarding the quality of the food children in the district are being served at lunch.
Equipped with signs comparing the photos of lunch food the GPISD posts on its website with other photos taken by kids, parents complained that the food served at the school is not nutritious enough for children to stay focused in class.
Edgar Suarez told CBSDFW he attended the district’s child nutrition advisory meeting on Monday to call attention to this issue. In that meeting, he met with other parents who shared his concerns and also brought photos of lunches to illustrate their disappointment.
"It's outrageous," he said."If you're hungry, you're not going to concentrate. You're going to be thinking of what you want to eat when you get home."
"There's always parameters that we do have to deal with and one of those we did explain at the meeting as we have government regulations that govern some of that and of course, federal funds are tied to those things," said GPISD’s public information officer Sam Buchmeyer at Thursday’s meeting.
But funding doesn’t seem to be a problem at the moment at GPISD. As previously reported by Local Profile, MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist, author and former wife of Jeff Bezos, donated $16 million to the district.
The use of the funds has not yet been determined by the district’s board of trustees, but the money could be used for additional staffing and enhanced programs. But the gift was “unrestricted,” which means that the board has no limit on the money’s use.
Buchmeyer said the company that provides the food is always looking for ways to improve the service based on these government restrictions, but parents at the meeting wanted to change the provider altogether. "They got to switch providers, whoever is providing this so that our kids can eat better and not worry about where their next meal is coming from," he said.
Parents who missed the Thursday meeting will be able to participate in the next meeting in January to find out more about this issue.
Local Profile has reached out to Grand Prairie ISD and this story will be updated pending response.
