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LAUSD, where this pilot was done, is facing existential threats from progressive budget cuts, a school-board/teacher-union faction fight, and charter schools (however you feel about these things), and working on better school lunch is at best a sideshow to the real and huge problems. No surprise the pilot did not scale.

found students replacing the Beef Jambalaya

Remembering my school days, I can picture a school cafeteria making an absolutely terrifying jambalaya. I mean, they couldn't get the whole dough + sauce + cheese thing down without the garbage bins getting most of the nutrition.

The real issue is that school systems administrators are not food service experts. They are educators. Lunch operations should be entirely outsourced to someone who knows what they are doing, or else eliminated. Preferably the latter.

Eliminated? For some kids, it's the one reliable meal they get a day.

When it comes to feeding hungry children, the invisible hand of the marketplace does not have a very good track record.

The education should be outsourced, too. As a system (i.e., not referring to specific individuals) these "educators" are proving no more effective at education than they are at food service.

Why Pilot Projects Fail