Lunch Photo Sparks Debate About Peabody High School Conditions

PEABODY, MA — It started when a Peabody Veterans Memorial High School student posted a photo of a cardboard lunch tray with four deep-fried nuggets on a Facebook group for Peabody residents. The student claimed it was a typical offering for kids on the free and reduced-price lunch program at the school.

A "criminal who gets put in jail for committing a crime gets fed better than us," the student wrote. "I don’t know what’s wrong with this society and these people but this is just not okay. I’m not sure what this society has come to but it’s disgusting."

Principal Chris Lord said school officials are looking into the photo. He said students are typically offered three to five options as sides to a main dish and "as much fruit and vegetables as they like."

State and federal regulations require schools to meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for free and reduced-price lunch programs, which recommend that no more than 30 percent of an individual's calories come from fat and less than 10 percent from saturated fat. Regulations also establish a standard for school meals to provide one-third of the Recommended Daily Allowances of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories.

But the incident highlights how local issues play out and take on a life of their own in the closed Facebook groups which are available in almost every Massachusetts community. Responses to the initial photo flooded the Moving Peabody Forward Community Facebook Group. In just over three hours Tuesday, there were 450 comments on the post.

While some comments debated what kind of food was actually on the tray (they're called pizza crunchers, for the record), many of the responses were harsh. "Brown bag it and you can have whatever you desire for lunch," one respondent said. "I call bull [expletive deleted] on this one," another person wrote.

Keith Doucette, an administrator of the Moving Peabody Forward Community Group who made an unsuccessful run for city council in this month's election, started a new thread Wednesday critical of the adults who dismissed the students' complaints. He posted a list of complaints that had been raised by students in the past that were initially dismissed by administrators and later found to be valid. Those problems included locked bathrooms, a broken heating system and a roof that leaked "like it was raining inside."

"This is just a small list of things that students found, reported and were ignored until Adults outside the school were made aware," Doucette wrote. "I do not see why everyone is so angry over this, the student and several others are taking a stand. Why are we not helping navigate the process instead of trying to silence them calling them liars?"

The heating issue, is still be an issue. Some respondents to Doucette's post said their kids reported classroom temperatures in the forties and fifties on Tuesday, ahead of Wednesday's cold snap. Lord said while most classrooms have heat, there are a few classrooms where parts to repair the system are on order. "The main office has a list of available, heated classrooms available every period of the day where teachers take their classes, if needed," Lord said.

Dave Copeland covers Peabody and other North Shore communities for Patch. He can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).