Not too cool for school (lunches)

Made-fresh chicken-ranch pasta, barbecue pulled pork sandwiches, 100 perent beef cheeseburgers, chicken tenders, homemade pumpkin bars, an all-you-can-eat buffet of fruit and veggies—is your mouth watering yet?
This was what the Custer School District Board of Education was served in a special meeting last Monday as they heard from Lunchtime Solutions, Inc. (LSI), which has been the district’s food service management company for 16 years.
Erica Layton, the foodservice director, presented on what the company does for the district and its students. After the board went through the line to receive its meal, Layton began explaining how the process works for students. As they move through the line, they should be picking up all the components of a well-rounded meal, and the cashier is trained to look for those on the student’s tray. If they try to get through the line without picking up the required servings of, say, fruits and vegetables, the cashier will send them back to get some.
“A big piece of what I do as director is compliance—and there’s a lot of it,”  said Layton. They comply to mandates and regulations set forth by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National School Lunch Program, Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, as well as state regulations. LSI develops the menus strategically to incorporate all the needed nutritional components.
“Everything you see is not what you buy at the grocery store,” Layton told the board.
Many things are specially prepared for schools to meet nutritional requirements. For example, the students are sometimes served Smucker’s Uncrustables, cereals like Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms, and in the past, Sunny D. These are not the same as are available for purchase for regular consumers, and are specially formulated for the National School Lunch Program.
Through the lunch service, LSI takes the temperature of meals served on the line four separate times, and takes the temperatures of freezers and coolers daily. In each building in the district, they passed health inspections with either 98 percent or 100 percent.
The program also boasts fresh-made meals for students each day, offering at least one meal option that is made from scratch that very day.
“Every single one of our homestyle meals is made from scratch daily. We don’t buy anything frozen, we don’t buy anything packaged. These ladies are here at 6:30 in the morning, starting to make lunch,” said Layton.
The size of the junior/senior high school portions is larger than the elementary sizes, and is reflected in the slightly different regular costs of $3.50 for an elementary meal versus $3.70 for a high school meal.
At the high school level, LSI also offers “premium’ meals at a separate “Cruisin Cafe” line, which are different from the regular menu and come in bigger portions.
Breakfast is served in class at elementary and at a stop and go station at the junior/senior high. It’s always a whole grain entree option with fruit and a choice of juice or milk. At the school board meeting which followed this meeting with LSI, the board approved providing free breakfasts for students through the rest of the school year due to the generous donations of local ranchers this year.
Layton meets with students and parents each year to get feedback on the program, and works to incorporate that feedback into the program. Last year, they made several changes based on these suggestions—all white meat chicken patties,  changing from beef-soy mixture hamburger patties to 100 percent beef, and added an Asian cuisine dish.
“That’s a big deal to a student, so we do pay attention and we do listen,” said Layton.
The program also aims to engage students by “making it fun.” For example, at the Tatanka on the Table event to celebrate the donated bison meat, students enjoyed several games and trying new menu items with the donated meat.
LSI also featured a “gross food” every day for the week of Halloween, like applesauce with green food coloring and gummy worms which was called “swamp slime.”
“The kids loved it,” said Layton.
Layton also has a goal to  increase nutrition education and get fresh produce from school gardens.
“I think that would be really great for students to get more involved in showing how we grow, clean, prepare and eat things here. It’s a good piece of education,” she said.
Lunchtime Solutions has a fixed-price contract with the district, which Layton says is “the biggest advantage” of having a food service management company. This means the district is insulated from food and labor inflation as LSI absorbs those costs. They also handle HR and trainings for the food service employees.