NORWICH — Marion Cross School students and families have embraced a new lunch program this school year, according to the principal.
While in past years, the school has provided bagged meals to students who wanted them, the school now is participating in the federal school nutrition program and providing hot meals for the first time, Principal Shawn Gonyaw said.
Some 90% of the school’s students get hot lunch on Fridays, when pizza is on the menu, he said. Other days, participation ranges from 75-80%, much higher than in previous years when few of the school’s approximately 300 students in grades preK-6 got school meals, he said.
Though in the recent past the same group, Fresh Picks Cafe, prepared some of the same meals in Hanover, they came over to Norwich in bags.
“It just loses something when it gets packaged and put in a brown bag,” Gonyaw said.
This year, meals are prepared at Hanover High School and then transported to Marion Cross School, where a food service worker heats them up in the school’s oven, and the meals are served warm on trays. Meals cannot be fully prepared and cooked at Marion Cross until the school gets a new septic system, Gonyaw said.
But there is progress on the long-standing septic issue as well. The Norwich School District on Thursday issued a request for proposals seeking details on costs for the replacement and installation of a pre-treatment system for an on-site septic plant. Proposals are due by 10 a.m. Nov. 1. The board expects to pick a pretreatment system by January.
“Assuming the RFP process results in a proposal that the Board can support, we are hoping to have a warrant article on the ballot for a vote at Town Meeting in March 2023,” School Board Chairman Tom Candon said in an email.
According to the RFP, the board hopes construction will be completed by the end of Aug. 25, 2024.
Meanwhile, students at Marion Cross are adjusting to the new lunch program. In past years, almost all Marion Cross students brought lunch from home and one child from each class would go to the school’s kitchen to collect the bagged meals. This year, students had to learn how to stand in a hot lunch line for the first time, Gonyaw said.
“Marion Cross School kids have never had hot lunch,” he said.
The school implemented the new program this school year in compliance with a new state law, SB 100, that requires all public schools in the state to participate in the federal school lunch program with no exception.
Marion Cross and Windham Elementary, which had fewer than 20 children enrolled last year and also began serving meals in compliance with the new law this fall, are the last two schools to begin participating in the federal program, said Rosie Krueger, Vermont’s director of child nutrition programs. Prior to the new legislation, schools had the option of exempting themselves from the federal program.
Krueger acknowledged that participating in the federal program requires some additional paperwork, but she said the program’s rules are mainly in place to “ensure that students are getting a healthy and safe meal.”
Most of the regulations relate to food safety and nutrition standards, Krueger said.
“I think there’s a good reason for those,” she said.
Marion Cross School parent Molly Riordan, who also serves as co-chairwoman of the school’s parent teacher organization and whose oldest child is now in college, said she has long hoped that the school would participate in the federal lunch program, but she said the school’s “kitchen constraints” made it difficult.
“Now I know that the state of Vermont has mandated lunch … which I think is fantastic,” Riordan said.
As a result, free meals are available to all students every school day, she said. The Vermont Legislature, through SB 100, extended universal free school meals, available nationally earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, through this school year. New Hampshire, like much of the rest of the country, has returned to the pre-pandemic requirement that families income-qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
Riordan said there is a perception that families in Norwich, where U.S. Census data shows that the median household income was more than $83,000 in 2020, might not need free meals. But, she said, “as a parent, I think it’s awesome.”
She currently has a second grader and a sixth grader at the school. One of them likes the school’s breakfasts and sometimes likes the lunch. Riordan said it’s nice to have the option.
“The quality of this food is definitely improved,” she said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
