"We have a lot of respect for the budget issues the district is dealing with, but this is potentially going to have an impact on children's health," said Sandy Sherman, director of nutrition education at the Food Trust, a Philadelphia nonprofit.
District spokeswoman Shana Kemp said that all meals would continue to meet U.S. Department of Agriculture and Pennsylvania Department of Education nutritional standards and that the district "will provide the opportunity to further increase the availability of fresh fruits and salads within these school cafeterias."
But come fall, three-quarters of existing elementary and middle school full-service kitchens will close, leaving just 62 schools offering freshly prepared food. Most of the remaining kitchens are in high schools.
Nine of the district's 196 elementary and middle schools will have full-service kitchens. The schools switching to pre-plated meals were chosen because their food programs were losing money.
The 26 schools where kitchens will close educate 16,681 children and serve 21,108 meals annually, and many are in the city's poorest neighborhoods. They will switch from food prepared in the school by cafeteria workers to meals cooked, plated, and frozen several days before consumption and trucked in from a warehouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Some satellite meals are served hot; others are not.
In the last few years, the district received kudos for its efforts to incorporate fresher, healthier food into school breakfasts and lunches. But "this is a real step back," said Jonathan Stein, general counsel at Community Legal Services and a longtime antipoverty activist.
Students find the pre-plated meals less appetizing, cafeteria workers say. In the schools without full-service kitchens, more food is thrown out and fewer students eat.
