I‘ve spent too much money on DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates and UberEats. This I know to be true. Has a majority of that money been spent between the hours of 7:40 a.m. and 2:30 p.m? No comment. I can’t help myself! Getting DoorDash is like when you were in elementary school and you came back from a dentist appointment with a Boudin’s bag and you were the luckiest kid ever.

That’s the fun part. But the real part is that I am fortunate enough to qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch on a technicality and yet I am still going out and choosing to spend my personal minimum wage job money on food. It seems counterintuitive, to be able to get a free meal a day at RHS and instead paying a $5 delivery fee on someone’s app. But as a vegetarian woman who also tries to avoid animal by-products, my options are very limited in the school cafeteria.

Food services is doing their job as best they can, I get that. But when you cut out all meals that contain animal product, you’re left with 1. A thick, defrosted Smuckers PB&J 2. French Fries, which they do not sell separately 3. The chips and fruit you find in plastic bins by the window. Is that all we’re allowed to eat? I’ll go ahead and pay the extra money, because I don’t think I could eat a pound of Smuckers every day. I’ll stick with my soups and salads and acai.

Personally, I don’t even have it that bad. Kosher and gluten-free meals, for example, are required to be cooked in entire specific kitchens. And before writing this I thought that it was law to be able to provide meals within religious parameters and dietary preferences at public schools, but sadly that does not seem to be the case.

When child nutrition director Jay Brown replied to my email, he did not offer any PDF file kosher/halal/vegan/vegetarian meal application I was hoping for. Before contacting him, I had asked around with the employees in the cafeteria for some kind of information about a special dietary meal plan and no one I spoke to knew of any options, but everyone referred me to someone else who might.

Instead, I was told that food services would like to have special menus but federal and state guidelines make flexibility difficult.

Students who are allergic to a food group must have a signed doctor’s note saying so, and, according to the RJUHSD nutrition page, the cafeteria does not even necessarily have to offer that student an accommodated meal unless the allergy is life-threatening. (See: “Generally, children with food allergies or intolerances do not have a disability as defined under either Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or Part B of IDEA, and the school food service may, but is not required to, make food substitutions for them.”)

But for non-medical reasons, like religious exemptions and dietary preferences, there is no stated procedure. Using that info from Brown saying the student should contact the cafeteria to find an accommodation, I can only assume that special menus are up to cafeteria employee discretion.

This isn’t a problem with Food Services necessarily. It’s a problem with how we have (not) outlined for preference in our policy and what the district is (not) doing about it.
Is this fair to a child whose religion and diet restrictions to ask them to have separated and specially prepared food? Some would argue that it’s a public school, so who cares? Why can’t kids suck it up and just not eat if they’re so picky about it? And to that I say: It’s not pickiness, and these are meals that kids rely on for the day.

I am able to pack my own lunch from school, to ask someone to drop it off for me, or to buy it with my own money. That’s not the case for everyone. And if you can’t pack a lunch or rely on the cafeteria, where are you going to eat? Not from DoorDash, because that costs extra money and if you’re caught you’ll get pulled up to the office in the middle of the school day and confronted with all of your receipts.

I’ve looked at the USDA guidelines; in some areas they are vague and lenient and in others they are oddly specific and questionable. I understand it must be hard to work around them. And I understand that random food delivery men around campus is a hazard for admin. But I expect more understanding from administrators and Food Services at this point in regards to asking for or buying alternative food options.