Everyone eats for free at the biggest restaurant in town: DeKalb High School
Northern Public Radio | By Peter Medlin
Published October 3, 2024 at 4:46 PM CDT
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Peter Medlin
DeKalb High School's cafeteria
The executive chef chops onions for a homemade salsa. Around the corner, cooks pinch pizza dough and dishes clang in the sink.
A few feet away, hundreds of customers pour in, order, & leave in minutes. Today, they’ll serve upward of 1,700 meals. Welcome to the biggest and busiest restaurant in town: DeKalb High School.
“Last year, we served 1.15 million meals, and we're already trending for more this year," said Mike Chamness. He’s the food service manager at DeKalb Public Schools.
“Hi friend! What can I get you today?” asks Tiffany, one of the school’s food workers. She's guiding a line of students through her station.
This first rush just started. Students come through 200 at a time. It won’t really slow down for another four hours. The workers have been prepping food since 6 a.m.
And DeKalb students have a lot of options. There's pasta, a deli, salad, stir fry, pizza, a Chipotle-style burrito bar, grab & go station and, of course, a daily special. Today, it’s the chili dog.
There are more options this year, thanks to the district’s new partnership with food vendor Organic Life.
Connor Arteaga is the food service director with Organic Life. Arteaga says there are nutrition standards they have to meet.
“We have to offer all five of our components, which are your grains, your meat/meat alternative, your fruit or vegetable, and then your milk," said Arteaga. "They must take three out of the five for lunch, one of which has to be a half a cup of fruit or a vegetable.”
DeKalb offers free meals to every student, breakfast and lunch -- no matter age or income.
“Unfortunately, some of our students, it could be the only meals they get every day, but definitely the healthiest meals they get every day too," said Chamness. He says the benefits don’t end there.
“There's less trips to the nurse's office. A lot of times, kids are going to the nurse's office when all it was is that they were hungry," he said. "So, there's less trips to the nurse's office and we have improved behavior in the district.”
Most studies show universal meals lead to fewer disciplinary issues and increase academic performance.
The food program looks a little different at the middle and elementary schools. For example, they serve breakfast in the classrooms at those levels.
“Which also removes that stigma," said Chamness. "Everybody's eating at the same time, where before there was an option: you can go outside and play with your friends or you can come in and eat breakfast.”
But, at DeKalb, universal meals are a relatively new thing. They’ve been offering them for four years. During the pandemic, the federal government allowed all schools to offer free meals. That expired in 2022, but after many schools, like DeKalb, saw the positives -- they couldn’t go back.
Roxanne Ramage is with the Illinois State Board of Education. She says it’s a trend they’ve seen in Illinois.
“We did see some growth after that pandemic feeding and continue to support kids," she said. "It's great when the kids can come to school and not have to worry about any of that."
DeKalb qualifies for universal meals through the Community Eligibility Provision. It’s a federal program where schools can offer free meals if a certain percentage of students qualify for federal assistance like Medicaid or SNAP.
“It was 40% until this school year," Ramage said, "and then the federal government changed that, and that reduced that percentage down to 25%."
Now more schools qualify, but Ramage says they haven’t seen a big increase in participation.
That’s because the fewer students who qualify for federal assistance, the lower the school’s reimbursement rate, so it’s not financially feasible for some schools.
Illinois did pass a universal free meals law last year. The problem is that they didn’t fund it. The law’s sponsor Rep. Maurice West introduced another bill this year to devote $200 million to the program but it didn’t pass.
If it does pass, at some point, the food staff in DeKalb think it could make a massive difference.
They say kids having access to meals every day doesn’t just fill their stomachs: it fuels their bodies so they can play tag during recess, and powers their brain so they focus on their homework — and builds a foundation for a healthy life.
