Thanks to an engaging school lunch program, some Philadelphia students can say goodbye to long lunch lines and dreary cafeteria tables that leave some feeling left out and isolated.
Called Eatiquette, the program is an initiative of the Vetri Foundation that provides healthy meals and seeks to bring rowdy school cafeteria culture closer to something that resembles fine dining.
The traditional school cafeteria is reimagined with family-style meals made from scratch and served on real plates and silverware by their own peers as a lesson in respect. Rather than long rectangular tables, small round ones encourage conversations different from those typically heard roaring from the lunchroom.
“When we bring our program in, it really transforms the way the school thinks about what happens for that 30 minutes in the lunchroom,” said Kelly Herrenkohl, executive director of the Vetri Foundation.
The foundation, which has partnered with 10 Pennsylvania schools and two summer camps, has served more than 430,000 healthy meals since it was founded in 2012.
More than 1,300 Philadelphia District students are now participating in the program through partnerships that the foundation has with Julia DeBurgos and William Ziegler Elementaries. At three Philadelphia charter schools, more than 2,100 students are served by the program.
“I think that lunch traditionally has not really been focused on as part of the educational day, and I think, honestly, that’s true both in charters and in neighborhood schools,” said Herrenkohl.
The Vetri Foundation recently received a $40,000 grant from the Philadelphia Foundation to study the effects of Eatiquette at its two newest partner schools: Julia DeBurgos and Memphis Street Academy Charter School in North Philadelphia.
The Public Health Management Corp. (PHMC) will collect data on attendance, classroom behavior, and academic achievement at each of the schools. A report on the program's performance will be released in September 2016.
Herrenkohl said the report will support the foundation’s goal of arming “wellness champions” with concrete data to validate the positive reviews that Eatiquette has received from existing partner schools.
“One of the things that we hear very consistently is that the Eatiquette program improves school culture, because the kids really feel proud to have this kind of program in their schools,” Herrenkohl said.
“They love that the teachers are involved in the lunchroom, that they get to engage with the school adults in a different way than they normally would in the classroom. We’ve actually heard that attendance goes up.”
Paul Spina, principal at Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, said that he has seen the positive impact that Eatiquette has had on his students since the partnership began in 2013.
“On Thursdays, days that Vetri is served, we have the highest attendance for students for the week, and the adults,” Spina said.