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Budget cuts next year will reduce kitchen staff and move the school district back to premade meals. Previously, the district funded 32% of the nutrition services budget to supplement what the district received in federal and state money.
School meals in Eugene School District 4J will be less fresh next year — and more limited.
District staff shared more details in an April 22 budget committee meeting about how 4J’s $27.7 million budget reduction for next year will reduce kitchen staff in schools and eliminate 4J’s scratch-cooking — switching the district back to mainly premade food bought from outside vendors.
The district also will limit students to one limited serving of free breakfast and lunch a day. Currently, students in 4J schools can eat as much food as they want for free.
The cuts were part of Superintendent Miriam Mickelson’s phased cuts approved in January by the school board, but Budget Committee members requested more information during their April 8 meeting.
Brooke Wagner, assistant superintendent of administrative services, said she and Jill Cuadros, nutrition services director, partnered with front-line food services staff and union leaders to make the difficult decisions about trade-offs.
“This was grounded in day-to-day realities of staffing, food production production, and student service,” Cuadros said.
An in-house cooking model
The nutrition services budget will be cut by about $3 million next year, with $2.4 million of the reduction resulting from the district’s decision to lessen their contribution. The district’s food budget for this year is about $12 million.
The 4J district is an outlier in Oregon in its investment in school meals. Mickelson said the district is currently funding 32% of the nutrition services budget while other Oregon districts rely solely on federal and state funds to feed students or just contribute up to 5% of the total budget. She also said nearly all other districts in Oregon provide one free serving of lunch and breakfast, not the “all-you-care-to-eat” model 4J currently provides.
The district switched to an in-house, scratch-cooking model in 2019 in an effort to source food locally and provide healthier meals for students. Certified chefs developed recipes and bought ingredients from local growers. The district paused the program during the pandemic and resumed it in 2023.
Board member Judy Newman, who was on the school board in 2019 when it approved the scratch-cooking program, praised the staff who made it happen.
“Our nutrition staff worked incredibly hard to make that happen, our community partners, and there’s just a little bit of grieving to have to go backwards from that, and I just want to acknowledge that, because that was wonderful,” Newman said. “I hope to get back to that one day again.”
But meals made from scratch are more expensive than premade meals and additional helpings beyond a student’s first serving are not covered in state and federal funding. Cuadros said the district currently pays for about $879,000 worth of meals that are not reimbursable with state or federal money.
Cuadros said depending on future cuts to nutrition services budget in the next year or two, 4J cafeterias may begin to recirculate foods that students abandon on the “No Thank You” table, where they can ditch certain items that they were required to have on their tray when going through the line, but sometimes don’t want to eat. She said it’s common practice in other districts to retrieve these foods and resell them.
The impact
Kara Mayer, food service coordinator at Spencer Butte Middle School, told committee members about how the changes will negatively impact her staff and the students she serves, especially those who live in poverty.
She brought two trays of food to the committee to provide a visual representation of the change. One had the amount of food on a typical student’s breakfast tray and the other had the amount of food a student will be allowed to eat for free next year. The tray representing next year’s allotment of breakfast had about half as much food as the tray representing this year’s average breakfast.
“I chose a breakfast because that is when our students come to us the most hungry,” Mayer said. “I have heard it, directly from students, over and over again … things like, ‘I didn’t have dinner last night. Can I come and get some more?’”
While cafeteria workers will never take food out of a student’s hands due to a low or negative balance in their food account, parents will be expected to pay for any food beyond the first serving. Cuadros acknowledged that this will present challenges.
“We will be here at the end of every fiscal year asking to make the negative meal balance whole again,” she said. “That is an inevitable point of where we’re headed.”
Mickelson said the district is exploring ways of helping families who are food-insecure, including partnering with outside organizations to create food scholarships to cover seconds and thirds or starting a backpack food program or food pantry.
“We remain deeply committed to student access to high-quality meals, and the staff and relationships that make this program meaningful,” said Cuadros. “We will continue to work in partnership, moving back towards that vision as our resources allow.”
