By Katie Volk
Staff Writer
In past years, snack carts have consistently sold food to Costa students during nutrition and lunch. However, recently, snack carts have been diminishing in appearance during nutrition. Snack carts should return during nutrition to efficiently feed all students.
In previous years, four to five snack carts have been placed in various spots around the
school campus during nutrition/lunch to supply Costa students with energy before the next two periods that proceed lunch. However, according to Manhattan Beach Unified School District, cafeteria staff and Principal Dr. Karina Gerger, a lack of employment is at fault for the missing snack carts. Despite this valid reason for the lack of snack carts, the impact of these carts’ absences must be examined closely.
One must consider the massive amount of students that do not eat breakfast or have no time to pack snacks and lunch food to bring with them to school. Therefore, students have to spend the majority of their nutrition and lunch waiting in one extremely long line for food, which should be readily available.
Without multiple snack carts, students run the risk of remaining hungry for hours.According to Feeding America, children that receive little food are more likely to have lower academic performance and even focus and behavioral issues. Therefore, students unable to access food would focus their attention toward their personal exhaustion, rather than more importantly the education being taught during class time.
Students that don’t bring food to school depend on alternate sources of food. Before
COVID-19, many students would ask their parents to drop off food for them at the office during lunch and nutrition, or used delivery services such as DoorDash to deliver food to students.
Since the pandemic, students can no longer use these online delivery services. The process to obtain food at a snack cart is quick and simple and would save plenty of time and money for both students and parents. If snack carts aren’t to return, students should be permitted to use DoorDash and similar services for food delivery at school.
Recently, with the retraction of most snack carts, there has been only one snack cart made available to students during both snack and lunch periods. In addition, Costa’s cafeteria is open daily to cater to over 2,500 students, a number which even when halved is too high for only two locations to manage. If snack carts are to come back, it is guaranteed that lines are to shorten, making standing in line less time consuming for students, and making staff feel relief from having less hungry students to provide to before the bell rings.
Although Costa students have expressed disappointment that snack carts are no longer available, the Costa staff must be considered before making the ultimate decision whether or not the carts should make a comeback. Costa staff is overwhelmed daily with the amount of students that are in need of food, and to demand a return of the carts with an insufficient amount of employees to supervise the carts would be unreasonable. Costa should place a greater effort into increasing employment among Costa staff that provides food to students.
If snack carts make a return to Costa, the issues of having hungry students, debates about going off-campus, and students expending their time waiting in long lines will all be solved. Going through such a long process to acquire food for snack and lunch should not be students’ daily duty, as students deserve more accessible means of food options.
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