Jay students get new menu

New year, new food.

Students will be met with new lunch choices when they return to school Friday as Jay School Corporation transitions to using Chartwells to manage its food service.

“We’re just super excited to be here,” said Siobhan Carey, resident district manager for Chartwells. “Our goal is to bring nutrition education to the students and really just get them excited about school lunch. That’s really our focus.”

Those curious about what the new school menus will look like can view them by visiting JaySchoolCorp.Nutrislice.com and clicking on the appropriate school. (Menus, which include allergen and dietary information, are currently listed through the end of August.)

In the elementary schools, students will generally have one hot option and two cold options for entrées. For example, East Elementary’s menu for Friday features macaroni and cheese, a garden salad or a “nachos fun lunch.” (The fun lunches involve separate ingredients that allow students to put them together as they would like.) Students will also be able to select items from the Extra Extra station — a fruit and vegetable bar. East’s options for Friday include carrots, potato salad, cherry tomatoes, watermelon and a spinach and romaine salad.

“If they want to try a little bit of everything, they can try a little bit of everything,” said Carey of the Extra Extra station. 

Middle school students will have a wider range of options that involves stations including:

•Grilled Express — burgers and chicken sandwiches

•2Mato — Pizza, pasta and calzones

•On the Go — Salads, cold sandwiches and snacks (designed for the student on the run)

“If you have a child that’s running to get to one of their specials, or cheer has a meeting, they can just grab a yogurt parfait and go,” said Carey.

Both middle schools will also have Extra Extra. Sono, which includes made-to-order nachos, tacos and burrito bowls, will be available at East Jay.

High school students will have all of the options that are available at the middle schools, with the addition of the So Deli station. That features ingredients — Friday’s menu includes ham, turkey, cheese, lettuce, jalapeño peppers, tomatoes, onions and hoagie rolls — to customize sandwiches or wraps.

Sometime after a service line remodel that is planned for fall break — Oct. 23 through 25 — high schoolers will be offered Student Choice. Over the course of a week, students will be able to try samples from four different station concepts. At the end of the week, they will vote, and the most popular concept will become a full-time option for the remainder of the semester.

In the coming weeks, Chartwells will also be introducing a new elementary school Breakfast in the Classroom program, made possible in part to a total of $62,000 in grants for new equipment the company obtained from No Kid Hungry, Indiana Dairy Council, and Food Research and Action Center.

About 10 minutes before students arrive in the morning, each classroom will be delivered an insulated bag containing prepackaged breakfasts. The meals will be available to students as they get settled in for the day. A separate bag will also be provided to each classroom for trash from breakfast.

The program will be rolled out on a school-by-school basis as Chartwells monitors the implementation of the new lunch system.

“The big thing is to get your teachers acclimated, get your students acclimated,” said Carey. “We don’t want to overwhelm everybody. Obviously this is a big change.

“We want to assess after a week of being in school: What buildings do we feel like we can do right now? And then just slowly start the transition.”

Problems or questions should be emailed to [email protected].

Jay School Board selected Chartwells in May to take over management of the corporation’s food service. (Superintendent Jeremy Gulley again made clear Wednesday that previous food service employees were retained under the new management structure.)

As part of its proposal, Chartwells indicated that it expects to save Jay Schools about $220,000 on food service in its first year. Part of that savings comes because of its ability to purchase food in greater quantities as the company provides food service to more than 600 school districts. Thirty-three of those, including Muncie, Blue River and Central Noble, are in Indiana.

Chartwells is also spending $429,000 on new equipment, some of which has already been installed.

Gulley said he’s excited about what the company can provide, especially in its ability to offer more options.

“I called a lot of the school districts in Indiana,” said Gulley of the process that went into making the change. “The overwhelming answer was, ‘We should have started using them a long time ago.”

Carey said Chartwells plans to introduce Jay Schools’ new food service director at the Aug. 19 school board meeting.