Dupage Policy Journal

At the Darien School Board's May 24 meeting, board members focused on the district's breakfast and lunch programs.

“We had to buy a lot of kitchen equipment to even get us to where we are – making what they do make from scratch and stuff,” Janine Kiwiet, president of Darien School Board, said at the meeting.

The board voted and approved an extended contract for the district food director Lillie M. Lillie. The superintendent of the district, Robert Langman, said other superintendents in surrounding districts had expressed their discontent with other third-party food vendors and how good Lillie has been in constructing and running the programs.

All three schools in the Darien district —  Mark DeLay, Lace, and Eisenhower —  all offer breakfast and lunch menus to their students. Through the 2021-22 school year, breakfast and lunch were free of charge to all students thanks to pandemic relief from the federal government. Menus for the schools include breakfast items like Rice Krispies, donuts, and blueberry muffins, while lunch options range from cheese pizza, taco salad, and mini corn dogs. 

According to Benefits.gov, the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are voluntary programs from the Illinois State Board of Education for public schools, private schools and residential child care institutions.

WAND-TV reported Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed House Bill 4813 that encourages schools to look for food providers that follow the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s child nutrition programs.

“Students deserve to receive healthy, high-quality meals that help them grow and learn,” Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria) said on WAND-TV. “For too long, our laws have locked school districts in a race to the bottom for ‘lowest bidder full service’ contracts that have disproportionately hurt low-income and minority students.”

President Biden signed the Keep Kids Fed Act in June of 2022 which extended the pandemic aid and flexibility for meal programs at schools through the next school year. The meal flexibility offered throughout the pandemic allowed many more meals than normal to be free to students and help schools deal with the ever-worsening supply chain issues that sometimes prevented them from receiving food at all.