| Meals Offer New Details To Digest
Loudoun County's school cafeteria food is about to get a closer inspection from parents this year, as the school system publishes ingredients for every item on the menu. The 34-page list of nutritional content is intended to inform parents of students with food allergies, religious dietary restrictions and other concerns. .
Bangor High School bans peanuts
BANGOR (AP) - Bangor High School is going all out to keep peanuts off school property to protect a freshman student with a severe food allergy.
The cafeteria staff is ridding the kitchen and lunchroom of any traces of peanuts, peanut butter or other foods that might trigger a potentially fatal reaction in the unnamed student. School vending machines have been emptied of snacks with nuts, including granola bars and bags of peanuts.
The school last week sent a letter home to parents asking that they refrain from packing peanuts or other nuts or nut products in their children's lunches. The letter also asked parents to make sure their children wash their faces and hands thoroughly before coming to school if they've had contact with nuts in the morning.
"We're taking every precaution we can," Principal Norris Nickerson said.
Pelser to head Whittier public works
WHITTIER - For the last two months David Pelser has been commuting from Sacramento to his home in La Mirada. That will all end on Sept. 4 when Pelser, 51, will become the new public works director for Whittier. He succeeds David Mochizuki, who retired after 21 years with the city. Pelser and his family moved to La Mirada two months ago in order to allow his 18-year-old twin daughters, Laura and Leanna, to attend Biola University. "We wanted them to be able to go away to school and have that experience, but they have a medical condition called celiac where you're intolerant to gluten," Pelser said. They can't eat food-grain antigens that are found in wheat, rye and barley. "That makes it difficult to travel and deal with institutional food," he said. "If they had to eat in a dorm cafeteria, they would get sick and wouldn't be able to continue." But with Pelser and his wife, Julie, moving to La Mirada, their daughters can eat at home.
Schools contend with unpaid school lunch bills
UNDATED (AP) - In Arkansas, as in other states, many public school districts are having problems picking up the tab for children who don't qualify for the federal school lunch program and whose parents don't send money with them to school for lunch. Last term, unpaid cafeteria charges in the Conway public schools, for instance, reached $14,000. By the end of the term, only about half of that had been collected. A food services group is looking for ways to resolve the ongoing problem for public schools in the state. Some want to merge the free-lunch and reduced-price programs. The Arkansas School Food Services Association says the state could pick up the cost, estimating an additional $3 million-a-year expense. (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.
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