Spirit Week, Lunch, Picnic and BTS (9/7)

[prin...@sethigh.org]

Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,

• How lunch works at SET
• How to reserve lunch
• Spirit Week (8/28-9/1)
  • Monday: Pajama Day
  • Tuesday: Twin Day
  • Wednesday: Barbenheimer
  • Thursday: Superhero
  • Friday: Retro Day
• Save the Date: SET Family Picnic and Back to School Night (9/7)
• Retreats Wrap-up

How lunch works at SET

As of last year the State of California is now providing free lunch to all students through the National School Lunch Program.  It is required by law that all schools provide free lunch.  While I 100% support this initiative and have always advocated for free lunch for all, we are not currently a part of the Nation School Lunch Program (NSLP), and based on last year's utilization we are hopeful that we can continue not to be.  Let me explain.

We used to be part of NSLP, but the quality of the food that we could provide at the prices that were reimbursed by the NSLP was, to put it frankly, disgusting.  Students did not eat it.  Students did not want it.  Many of our students who were desperately hungry chose hunger instead of the food.  To solve this problem, we decided to provide our own lunches and to cover the cost for the students who qualified for Free and Reduced lunch out of the general fund.  The food was much better and our students who did not qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch happily paid for the food.  The cost to the school was worth it.

Unfortunately, we cannot sustain that same program if we are giving away free food to all students.  Because the food is so yummy, we know that most of our students will want it.  We do not have the budget to be able to pay for meals for all students without receiving reimbursement from the State.  Last year, the number of students who requested a free lunch on any given day was sustainable, but if we find that it isn't and we have to go back to the NSLP, unfortunately the quality of the food may go back to what it was before.  We will try hard to find a vendor that provides good meals, though.  Hopefully now that the vendors will be guaranteed reimbursement on millions of meals per day, they will be able to increase the quality.

So, while we cannot provide free meals to all students this year, I do want to assure you that our policy has always been to never let a student go hungry.  We hope, though, that the students and families will not abuse the generous spirit of the school and oftentimes the personal contributions that all of our staff members make to student health and wellbeing.  We ask that the students who do not qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch continue to bring bag lunches or pay for the school lunch using the instructions that follow.  However, it will never be a problem if the student forgets their lunch, and no one should feel guilty for requesting a free lunch.  This is our challenge to solve, and not yours to endure.

Finally, since we purchase food for lunch ahead of time, all lunch reservations for the following week need to be made in advance.  We sometimes have extra food, though, so students should always ask a staff member if they forgot to reserve lunch or if they forget to bring lunch one day.  If a reservation is not made, however, there is no guarantee that we will have a meal for the student.  This is also true for the students who qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch.

For this coming week, please make sure that you get lunch reservations in this evening or early tomorrow morning.  Ms. Castro will be making a trip to Costco tomorrow morning and she will be making purchases for the week.

How to reserve lunch

• Reservations are made in CoreCompetency by clicking on the Meal menu option at the top of the screen
• All lunch reservations for the next week need to be made by 12:00 PM on Friday of the previous week  (for this week, please make reservations by Monday)
• The menu for the next week will be available by Wednesday morning of the previous week
• You are only allowed to order one item per day. If you get a message about exceeding your credit limit, that's because you tried to order two meals on the same day.  The Meal reservation system used to deduct from a credit, so that's a message from before meals became free when students could order as many meals as they wanted as long as they had enough credit.

Save the Date: SET Family Picnic and Back to School Night (9/7)

The SET Family Picnic is put on the by the SET PA and is always a fun time.  Please join us at Cabrillo Heights Park (the park right next to the school) at 2:00 PM.  It's our first minimum day that day so students will be released from school at 1:25.

On the same day, stick around for Back to School Night which will start at 4:00 PM.  You will follow your student's schedule and meet the teaching staff in the classroom setting.  All of the staff will be at the picnic, but that time is for casual conversation, good food, and fun.  Back to School Night is where the teachers explain the plan for the school year and lay out the expectations and explain the supports in place for their classes.

Retreats Wrap-up

I can only speak first-hand about the 9th grade overnight retreat since that's the one I was chaperoning, but that one was amazing, and I've heard great things and seen fun photos of the other retreats, as well.  Thank you again to the SET PA for providing the funding for these retreats so that we could spend more time with the students and less time planning and cooking.  We had the 9th grade retreat catered this year, and while I used to enjoy watching the 9th graders figure out how to cook their own dinner, it certainly was nice to not have to worry about shopping for food and figuring out how to entertain the students who weren't involved with cooking while simultaneously making sure that those who were were doing it safely.  Thank you parents!

Stop in on Monday to see the photos from all of the retreats on the SET TV wall.

 

The staff all agree that it was a great first week.  Hopefully the students are just as excited about the school year!

Dr. McCurdy