On a sunny September afternoon, Charlottesville High School students headed to the cafeteria and lined up for a new lunch item that has been a hit since its first day.
Rice bowls have made a splash among students, and adding them to the menu was years in the making, as Charlottesville City Schools wanted to respond to students’ requests for new, healthy options, while also tackling staffing challenges for the cafeteria.
“I love it,” China Archie, a 9th grader, said to Charlottesville Tomorrow about the rice bowls. “There has been a whole big line, so it kind of takes a long while to wait, because it’s so popular now and everybody likes it.”
Archie added that not only is she excited for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when the rice bowls are served, but also that she can customize their rice bowls.
“I think the part that makes it good is how we’re able to pick what we want on it, and nobody just puts random stuff on it and just gives it to us,” said Archie.
According to Carlton Jones, the nutritionist for Charlottesville City Schools, adding the rice bowls to the menu has not only taken time, but was the result of students speaking up about what they wanted to eat.
“Some students had some concerns about some of the menu items they were selecting,” said Jones, adding that they were concerned about the nutritional value of previous menu items and were looking for healthier options. “We were doing salads made-to-order and wraps made-to-order. It was going well. They enjoyed it. But these rice bowls are something that we wanted to do a few years ago. Just didn’t have a staffing pool,” he said.
The “hot bar,” or the rice bowl line, needs to be run by two people for it to function efficiently, which Jones said CHS didn’t have previously. While city schools experienced struggles staffing for cafeteria positions in previous years, this year, they had the staff they needed for the line. Now, Jones is hoping he can add some more protein choices to the hot bar like Halal-friendly foods.
Those menu options can make a big difference to many students. According to the Virginia Department of Education over 118 million lunches were served during the 2023-2024 school year. And the Virginia Parent Teacher Association reports that food insecurity among children and teens has increased since the pandemic. And a study by the University of Virginia reports that one in six Charlottesville residents experience food insecurity. But thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Eligibility Provision program — which city schools are a part of — students have access to free meals.
The addition of the rice bowls made some staff members nervous. But by the second week, they’ve gotten the hang of it.
“I did think it was going to be too much at first, because it’s like an uncounted number. We never know how many kids that we’re actually going to serve,” said Jacqueline Simmons, the cafeteria manager at CHS, during a break of the very busy lunch hour.
A week after rolling out the new menu, Simmons is happy about it, especially since the students love the new choice.
“To see that the kids like the restaurant-style stuff and to imitate, like a Chipotle-style [setting], yeah, it’s great,” said Simmons.
And as the students make their way down the line, they can tell the lunch staff what they want in their bowls. Having two choices of meat-based protein, and beans, they can choose any of the toppings including, a cheese sauce, salsa, jalapeños, banana peppers, cucumbers, baby spinach, lettuce and chopped tomatoes and onions.
As the inner cafeteria filled with students, some went outside to eat their lunch under the shade of the trees. That’s where Henry Hughes, a Junior, cleaned his bowl of every single grain of rice, before telling Charlottesville Tomorrow his thoughts on the new menu item.
“It’s better than what they had before,” Hughes said.
Seeing the success of the rice bowls at CHS, Jones is hoping to bring them to the new Charlottesville Middle School building once it’s opened.
“It’s always a challenge in school nutrition, just trying to beat that stigma of school lunch,” said Jones. “So when we can find something that’s successful and works good, it means everything.”
