District admits school skimped on meals

Michelle Anderson has an open refrigerator door policy with her daughter.

“She loves yogurt, fruit,” Anderson said. “She’s five, she needs to be eating.”

Anderson though said for weeks Kaitlyn would come home from school complaining and grumpy.

“Week by week, throwing herself on the floor and telling me she’s starving,” Anderson said.

But Anderson was confused. She looked at the school calendar and saw plenty of food her daughter enjoyed.

“Looked to me on the calendar that she was getting a lot of food,” Anderson said. “I looked at her and told her Kaitlyn you can’t be starving. If that’s the truth I am going to go in and I’m going to check it out.”

When Anderson visited Soaring Eagles Elementary School in Colorado Springs, she didn’t like what she saw.

“I was appalled. I was like are you kidding me? There’s a yogurt a piece of bread and like seven carrots,” Anderson said.

Anderson took pictures and complained.

Harrison School District 2 eventually discovered she was right.

“That was not proper, that was not what was needed or required,” said the districts supervisor of nutrition, Tammy Brunnar.

The district just moved to free breakfasts and lunches for all students this school year under the Community Eligibility Provision. Under that program, students are required to be served as least four ounces of fruits and vegetables. That wasn’t happening at Soaring Eagles.

“Because we have to serve so many fruits and vegetables on a platter a lot of workers are just seeing it getting discarded, so what some of our ladies do is like, well, you know they’re not going to eat it all so they cut it down on their own,” Brunnar said.

Brunnar says the staff has been retrained.

“It’s not the adults choice to cut down on what’s being served, it’s the child’s choice whether they want to eat what you served them or not,” Brunnar said.

More food possibly being wasted but hopefully fewer kids feeling like they are wasting away.