In recent years, students at John Dewey High School are following a surprising tendency – they prefer not to eat what is offered to them in lunchrooms. Such a tendency is rather justified than not. The food is not good enough.

The history of school lunches at John Dewey High School and discussions regarding its quality take us back to 1978. In the article originally published by the NY Times, students were evidently loving what the school had to offer. All because of the new program, The Energy Factory, that introduced the concept of fast-food in selected high schools. It originated in Las Vegas first, and the idea of the program was to achieve huge student engagement while reducing the amount of artificial flavors, food coloring and chemical preservatives in food, and, of course, make it even more tastier and affordable. The program achieved significant results, as students were reportedly lining up in huge numbers to get lunch. But how did things change almost 50 years later?

In 2023, according to the NYC Department of Education, almost every public school has a different lunch program, and students who attend a high school must be offered free lunch during school days. All menus are also subject to a set of rules. Here are some of them:

• All menus are pork free.
• No fried food is offered or served.
• No artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners.

Though menus regularly change, you can check out today´s menu here.

Most of the food is vegan, fat free and is made without artificial ingredients. But does it necessarily make food tastier? Do all these rules listed below make food look appetizing for students who need nutrition and energy to be productive in school for more than 7 hours? Here what a Dewey student had to share:

“Even though the food claims to be vegan and healthy, I can’t remember a single time when I ate some of the bread they gave us or those fried carrots… they feel like they were not made for human consumption. I would rather go to Johns Deli [a famous local deli next to the school] and spend a couple bucks for a chicken sandwich instead. Well, not only me, but almost all my friends do so…”

– Vazira, a senior student at JDHS.

In fact, complaints are being expressed here and there, but it seems like there is nobody, including teachers and social workers in this school who are willing to discuss such issues with students and try implementing something or come up with a solution. This whole situation feels like an endless loop of yearly ups-and-downs, where students pack the lunchroom to eat some normal food only during special days like the Thanksgiving feast.

When students start attending high school, they usually spend 4 years in the same school until they graduate. This means some of them will have to rely on what is offered at school as their primary source of nutrition. The NYC Department of Education inspects every single high school cafeteria twice a year, and they are required to keep an open database where they report the results of such inspections. If we pull up John Dewey High School from the list, we can see that last 4 inspections happened in 2022 and 2021, with no inspections (yet) happening in 2023.

The most recent inspection did not find any violations. 

While we can see that there were 2 inspections that happened before the recent one, and they found multiple violations earlier in 2022 and 2021, including sanitary issues. This means that schools sometimes are prone to violating the NYCDOE Sanitary Code and students (including you and me) could unwillingly consume food that was prepared with vermin [insects or pests that spread diseases] in the kitchen or food storage area.

While we questions ourselves and dig deeper into causes, hoping that this article could raise some extent of awareness among students, there is not much we can do except helping our school when it comes to school the budget. In order to increase the quality of school lunches as well as the equipment that is used to prepare them, students have to fill out a ¨Family Income Inquiry Form¨, which helps schools to receive money for their programs. The “FIIF” gets sent out to students and parents every year through emails, and from what we know, there are not many of them who actually spend time filling it out, despite the school administration giving extra notices time to time. If after reading this article you are tempted to improve lunch in our school, there is not much you can do other than filling out the FIIF and expressing your opinion to… someone. There has to be someone. Guess what? There is!

Currently, there is an AP Seminar Research going on where students collect different opinions regarding the school lunch. Your voice matters, and it is, perhaps, one of our (not so many) chances to make change. You can participate in the survey by clicking this link, and by participating you will also contribute to the start of something new for our future students.