Although Francisco Velazquez, a 14-year-old freshman with spiky hair and sunglasses, qualifies for a free lunch at Balboa High School here, he was not eating. He scanned a table full of friends and asserted, “I’m not hungry.”
On another day, a group of classmates who also qualify for federally subsidized lunches sat on a bench. One ate a slice of pizza from the line where students pay for food; the rest went without.
Lunchtime “is the best time to impress your peers,” said Lewis Geist, a senior at Balboa and its student body president. Being seen with a free or reduced-price meal, he said, “lowers your status.”
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San Francisco school officials are looking at ways to encourage more poor students to accept government-financed meals, including the possibility of introducing cashless cafeterias where all students are offered the same food choices and use debit cards or punch in codes so all students check out at the cashier in the same manner.
Only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide take advantage of the subsidized meal program. The stigma of accepting a government lunch, while others are paying for food from a different menu, is a problem school districts across the country have been quietly confronting with mixed results, school officials said.
Most of the separate lines came into being in response to a federal requirement that food of minimal nutritional value not be sold in the same place as subsidized meals — which must meet certain nutritional standards.
“Anywhere you sell a la carte foods, that automatically means kids who can’t afford to purchase them are being identified,” said Kate Adamick, a lawyer, chef and food systems consultant based in New York.
Most elementary-school children see no problem with free lunches, school officials say, but by the time they enter middle school, social status intervenes. And at lunchtime, as students choose with whom to associate, many from poor families either pay cash or go hungry if they don’t bring lunches.
“I know kids need to eat, but they don’t want to be identified with free food,” said Kenneth Block, a track coach who oversees the lunch shift at Balboa High.