There's more.

So, my next problem with school: the food. Because we are relatively poor, Dutch gets school lunch at the reduced price of $.40, and breakfast for free. Because I'm lazy, and that's pretty freaking cheap, I'm inclined to have her eat school food every day. But... the food is kind of crap. Portland Public Schools is working REALLY hard to improve their food, but there's only so much you can do with a miniscule budget and limited kitchen capacity, so there's a lot of mystery meat and white processed starchy things. Dutch has eaten school lunch for both her lunches, and my impression is that she's one of only a handful of kids who do.* This doesn't bother her, and she likes the food.

We've also been browbeating her about what she eats. The kids are served an entree, and can choose between chocolate or regular milk and then select fruit and vegetable options from a salad bar. She has drunk chocolate milk two days in a row, despite having been told after day one that she could have it only once a week. She argued that the regular milk costs extra, which is not true, but she seemed to genuinely believe it. We've also been interrogating her about her fruit and veggie consumption - we want her to eat a fruit and a veggie. Day one, she ate strawberries and sugar snap peas (I told you they were working hard on their food!), but day two she ate a plum and fruit salad. Her ability to differentiate between fruits and vegetables is legitimately wobbly. We'll keep after her on that...

AND the teacher told her she couldn't bring her water bottle into the cafeteria, which I have to follow up on, if only to file a formal complaint at the district level. (I suspect it's USDA policy - at the kids' former daycare, no water could be served at the table at all, lest it undercut the dairy industry's stranglehold on kids who get USDA food. )

Anyway, I am very grateful for all the work of activist parents, administrators, teachers, and cafeteria staff across the nation and locally, because I know the lunch Dutch bellies up to every day is much, much better than it would have been ten years ago.

Lastly, Dutch informed us with wide eyes that the cafeteria workers are REALLY, REALLY OLD. "They're EVEN OLDER than you, mom!" Apparently the music teacher is also perilously close to the grave. I had no idea that the school staff was made up of nonagenarians.

*Washing me in a wave of insecurity - does it make me a terrible mommy that I'm too lazy and cheap to pack my child a lunch of homemade, nutritious, delicious food? Well, possibly. Also, now Dutch is in the habit of saying "goddamn" as in "Mom, I can't tie my goddamn shoes!" and that's definitely my fault, too.