Chicago Public School Bans Homemade Lunches

Many parents don't like the meals that school cafeterias dish out. But you can always send the kids off for the day with a healthy, brown bag lunch, right? Not if your children attend Chicago's Little Village Academy.

Little Village's principal, Elsa Carmona, banned brown bag lunches from the school cafeteria. The lunch box is now a thing of the past at this Chicago school.

The rule understandably has many parents and students very upset. Not only does the regulation seem overreaching (though Carmona states that it's a fairly common practice in Chicago), but it prevents parents from packing nutritious, healthy meals that they know their kids will actually eat.

Kids with a medical reason can still have parents pack them a lunch, but all other students and parents must adhere to this extreme cafeteria rule. Carmona says that banning bag lunches is healthier for students and oftentimes is the difference "between a milk and a Coke." Here's an idea: just ban sugary sodas from school — not all foods brought from home.

A Chicago Public School spokeswoman told the Chicago Tribune that it's up to principals whether or not they want to ban packed lunches in their schools. Should a principal get to decide what every child in the school gets to eat instead of the parents? Another issue is that if the family does not qualify for free or reduced lunch, parents may end up paying more for a school meal than they would for a home-packed one. In the case of Little Village Academy, the food provider is Chartwells-Thompson, and the cost is $2.25 a lunch. Paying $2.25 per lunch is pretty steep, especially if kids wind up dumping most of the food because they don't like it.

Sure, there is the danger that kids could show up with bagged lunches consisting of chips and soda. But a healthy bag lunch is easy to achieve, and rules could be put in place to make sure that home-brought meals meet certain nutrition requirements.

We can all applaud healthy school meal programs — no one is debating that. And with one in three American kids struggling with being overweight or obese, we absolutely need some school lunch reform. But is banning homemade lunches really the way to do it?

Parents and students should have the option to provide a packed, healthy lunch. Sign our petition to Principal Carmona, and let Little Village Academy know that you support healthy lunches just like they do, but an all out ban on brown bag lunches is inappropriate and overreaching.

Photo credit: Piutus via Flickr