Earlier in the year, UHS and other schools in Florida flooded with new students from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria damaged the majority of the U.S territory in September of 2017. Many residents had moved to Florida either indefinitely or permanently in search of new opportunities and safer housing. After this, the cafeteria staff had been given special permission to serve meals to all UHS students for free, which resulted in a total of 3391 meals served on October 19th, 2017.
Joseph Eisenbise, The UHS Cafeteria Manager, is responsible for helping control the chaos that daily ensues in the lunchroom. “When I started at UHS in 2009, we were serving around 1,000 total meals per day. That included roughly 200 breakfasts with 800 lunches. On 11/5/15, we served 601 breakfasts, 1513 lunches, and 576 after school meals to total 2690. This shattered all previous records. Than recently, on 10/19/17, we managed to break that record at 3391 total meals during a period that we were allowed to feed all students at no charge because of a provision allowed to us temporarily for hurricane relief. That was 729 breakfasts, 2311 lunches, and 351 meals after school.” This means that most of the UHS’ student body would’ve been fed during this period. Many students at University High School appreciated this, “I don’t usually get lunch at school because I cannot afford to, and the free lunch they served during the year was really nice to have, seeing as I was able to eat lunch at school.” said Kiara Perez, Junior at UHS. UHS didn’t just offer free meals to its students, but the school also offers after school transportation on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as on Saturdays for the long tutoring sessions. Regardless of the hurricane situation back from 2017, the UHS cafeteria is always helpful towards students who struggle to pay for lunch but are not able to get money for it. In mention of the efforts of the lunch staff in September, Alexis Saez said “I buy lunch at school every day in the cafeteria, and although I can pay for it, I appreciate all that the UHS lunch staff does for its students.”
By Lesly Lemus