School lunch used to ace the test

Ray Salazar fondly remembers the lunches he got at school in the 1980s, especially the “stick-to-your-ribs” chop suey and turkey a la King followed by a warm piece of chocolate cake. This wasn’t at a private school — this was Hubbard High School, a public school in Chicago’s West Lawn neighborhood.

Now, as a CPS high school teacher, Salazar shudders at what he sees on his students’ trays today.

“It seems like it’s just getting worse and worse,” he said. “What I see in the lunchroom is those sad hamburgers, as one student described them to me. There’s like, a handful of chicken nugget things and like, an apple.”

At a recent CPS-hosted taste test at Hanson Park Elementary in Belmont Cragin, students had mixed reviews with some specific complaints. Many complained of undercooked food, spoiled milk and entrees that just don’t taste right.

“I think it should be better,” said eighth grader Fabian Ortega. “It tastes weird.”

He said sometimes if he doesn’t like what’s being served, he won’t eat until he gets home.

Sixth grader London Taylor said the key is to have low expectations.

“Sometimes it is a little nasty, but that is okay,” said sixth grader London Taylor. “We are not going to be getting fancy food like in Paris.”

She likes the macaroni and cheese, but she doesn’t care for the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A lot of students agreed, describing it as watery and chunky.

Students complaining about school lunch is nothing new. According to a 2024 CPS survey, two-thirds of students who responded said the No. 1 reason they turn down the free meal is the quality.

CPS officials say they are trying to make lunch more appetizing, even opening themselves up to student feedback.

But as it turns out, there are real reasons why students have found school lunch less appealing over the past couple of decades. The shift in taste seems to point to privatization and a change in health guidelines.

From scratch to packaged meals

If you ask any longtime CPS kitchen worker, they can tell you when things started to change. Maria Perez has worked in CPS lunchrooms for more than 30 years. When she started, she worked in what she calls a “cooking” kitchen.

“We made almost everything,” she said. “The sauce for the pizza, the patties for the hamburgers. It was from scratch. But that was a long time ago.”

CPS would provide recipes, but Perez smiled and said she thinks cooks “made them their own.” If they thought the food needed a little more salt or spice, they would add it.

These days, even in schools with full kitchens, most food comes precooked. The workers are given instructions on how to heat it up.

Another longtime lunchroom worker, Maria Astorga, said when she started 20 years ago, the kitchen would get ground beef to make Salisbury steak patties, and they would freshly make the accompanying gravy and potatoes.

Now, the steak comes precooked and the mashed potatoes and gravy come in powder form. All Astorga has to do is put it in a “big machine” with water and mix it.

A recent bright spot in the cafeteria offerings is “real” chicken drumsticks to cook, not just the usual prepackaged nuggets and patties. But options like that are few.

A state law that seemingly had nothing to do with food service may be the main reason for the lunchroom angst. In 1995, the state legislature handed control of Chicago Public Schools to the mayor, giving that office power to appoint the school board and CEO. The law also opened the door to privatization, calling on the leadership to “reduce the cost of non-educational services and implement cost-saving measures including the privatization of services where deemed appropriate.”

Currently, CPS pays Aramark, the mammoth food service and facilities management company, about $86 million a year to deliver meals to schools. Another smaller vendor, Open Kitchens, has a contract for $26 million to bring prepared meals to about 100 schools without full kitchens.

The vendor contracts call for them to deliver “nutritious and appealing meals that meet federal, state and local regulations, as well as CPS nutritional standards.”

Vendors aside, Perez and Astorga both said the kitchens are no longer staffed with enough workers to make much from scratch. Their union, Unite Here, said the number of lunchroom workers went from 3,240 in 2005 to about 1,800 positions last school year. That’s a 44% decrease in lunchroom workers in a school system with about 25% fewer students.

Perez said she started her job at an elementary school with about 600 students and about 13 kitchen workers.

“Now, we don’t have so many people working in the kitchen,” said Perez, who manages the kitchen at Solorio High School in Gage Park on the Southwest Side. “I got 1,200 kids. We are six people in the kitchen.”

CPS also has trouble filling lunchroom positions. The average salary is $31,000 a year, and district officials said that often when lunchroom workers get into schools, they try to transfer to higher-paying support staff jobs, like teaching assistants.

This summer, CPS eliminated about 250 positions that were vacant and announced that students will no longer get a hot meal after school. Instead, they will get packaged snacks.

‘School food is school food’

Another reason students might scrunch their noses at the taste of school meals is recent nutrition guidelines. They limit the amount of salt and sugar and other preservatives. More fresh fruits and vegetables are being served, like an apple on a tray with the chicken nuggets.

Perez said desserts like the homemade chocolate cake or CPS famed sugar cookies would not fly today. “It is too much sugar,” she said.

Even the processed food served in CPS cafeterias can taste different than the fast food or frozen meals kids are accustomed to.

Schools have also become more careful about food allergies. Astorga said the peanut butter tastes odd to students because often, it isn’t peanut butter at all; rather, it’s a spread derived from sunflower seeds.

Astorga said she’ll try to make little tweaks to get more kids to eat. Aramark usually sends two lunch options, but she prepares more of one option, knowing which one students tend to eat. For example, they don’t like the quesadillas but they will take the chicken nuggets.

She also takes it upon herself to get the kids to try the healthy options. She lights up when she talks about getting students to eat oatmeal.

“I always tell them, ‘Try, try, try. It’s good,’” she said in Spanish. “Never say you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it.”

Like Astorga, Perez said students in her school seem to at least like some of the school meals and are grateful for the lunchroom workers. Despite limitations, Perez does her best to make the food appealing to the students. She adds jalapenos to the pizza, which she said is a popular choice among the mostly Latino student population at her school.

“They love it,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools has been working with Aramark to try to make the food better. For a couple years now, they have been holding taste tests to see what items students like.

At Hanson Park Elementary this summer, students tested chicken enchilada soup and coleslaw. Most students said the soup was okay, but they didn’t like the coleslaw.

Ariana Luster, a nutrition specialist at CPS, said she and her colleagues often hear about the lauded food of yesteryear, whether it’s the sugar cookies or peanut butter and jelly between two graham crackers. Nutritionally, those things wouldn’t work today, she said.

But Luster, who graduated from Morgan Park High School on the Far South Side, is a little dubious about cafeteria food ever being great.

“School food is school food,” she said. “Excuse me, it’s not your grandma’s or your mom’s cooking from home. I think there’s always been an equal amount of nostalgia and memories towards school food, but there’s always been complaints as well.”

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.