With a new year comes new changes and new budgeting plans. Head of kitchen staff, Ms. Tina Pett runs the show for creating meal plans that best fit a student’s diet and the school lunch budget. This year’s addition of a new school lunch policy made it even harder to satisfy all the starving students. The policy included a closed lunch policy, a fourth lunch period and an increasing need for new kitchen staff. 

Students are constantly complaining around the new lunch policy, but what about the staff who prepare the food? Each year there’s a certain amount of money the kitchen staff receives from the government and other funds. Fifty percent of those funds go toward food, 40 percent is allocated for the salary of kitchen staff and the last 20 percent goes towards kitchen maintenance. Luckily the new policy didn’t cause any major problems with the budget plan. “We manage. We make do with what we have,” Ms. Pett said while conveying a strong hope that adhering to the new lunch policy will be a piece of cake with her new staff.

Eighty hours was how long it took to form a fully functioning lunch plan that meets the requirements listed by the state. Ms. Pett said the high school was the hardest to plan for because teenagers have slightly different diets than the younger students in the district. 

“One time we tried brats (hot dogs),” One of the fellow kitchen staff members claimed, “We didn’t think anybody would take them but we were completely out by the end of the day.” It’s unknown what would be the popular choice of the day and if they run low on the idem.

Plans are in the work for a lunch taste test sometime in January which will allow some high school students to express what items they want on future menus.