Students at Durango High School will be confined to campus this year to limit their person-to-person contacts in the age of the novel coronavirus, but they will gain one perk – lunch options from three off-campus restaurants.
Julie Popp, Durango School District 9-R spokeswoman, said the district has reached an agreement with Domino’s Pizza, Serious Texas Bar-B-Q and Zia Taqueria to provide meals at DHS for the upcoming year.
The meals from outside providers will come in addition to meals provided in the school’s cafeteria and options available at the Demon Deli, which include sandwiches, salads and yogurt grab-and-go options.
Superintendent Dan Snowberger said agreements with the restaurants were necessary because DHS typically follows an open-campus policy, and in past years most students opted to leave for lunch. The school doesn’t have the kitchen and cafeteria facilities to handle the full student load if all chose to remain on campus for lunch.
“Very few students from the high school would eat at the high school, but now we’re expecting that to increase, and we had to figure out how do we meet the capacity and still help the students stay socially distant while in the cafeteria,” he said.
Justin James, a part owner of Serious Texas Bar-B-Q, said the restaurant will start out donating 20 pounds of pulled pork each day, and 9-R’s cafeteria will make buns and provide vegetable sides for a pulled-pork sandwich lunch option.
“We’ll start with 20 pounds, if they need more we’ll provide it. This is all new. It’s all kind of a learning process right now,” he said.
Serious Texas Bar-B-Q has provided catered meals to Animas High School and Mountain Middle School for years, and James said this is an expansion of the restaurant’s relationship with local schools.
Carly Van Hof Thomson, business operations manager for Zia Taqueria, said in past years Zia’s north Main location draws a good number of DHS students.
Zia will provide its baby burritos one day per month in the cafeteria that meets federal school nutritional standards at the normal school lunch price rate.
The burritos will be made at Zia with beans, rice, meats, lettuce, pico de gallo and salsas. Additionally, Zia plans to provide a selection of burritos in the Demon Deli on a regular basis.
“We’ve been partnering with Animas High School and Mountain Middle School for several years to provide lunches to their students at a reduced rate through their catered lunch program. We are always happy to support these schools and students and are excited to be part of their catered lunch programs again this school year,” she said.
Van Hof Thomson said Zia will be making school lunches almost every weekday.
“Because we’ve been involved in the catered lunch program with Mountain Middle School and Animas High School for years, we’ve got this process down and it will not impact our normal customer flow at either location,” she said.
At DHS, lunch periods will be staggered so fewer students congregate in the cafeteria and at meal stations during lunch. Also, different stations offering the options are planned to help with social distancing.
The cafeteria’s traditional hot lunch option will still be available, but it will be packaged as a grab-and-go item.
Both breakfast and lunch will be offered at 9-R schools, and meals will be repackaged to be grab-and-go.
Families of remote learners can order their children’s lunch preferences through the district’s Infinite Campus online portal, the same online site where parents can check on their children’s grades.
At 9-R middle and elementary schools, students will eat their grab-and-go packaged meals while socially distanced outside or meals will be delivered to classrooms, where cohorts, students assigned to groups for the upcoming year, will be able to eat their meals.
Changes in the way meals are offered are part of 9-R’s efforts to limit students’ and staff members’ personal contacts during the day to minimize the risk of transmission of COVID-19.
Families can apply for free and reduced-price meals on 9-R’s website. The application is also offered in Spanish.
parmijo@durangoherald.com
