Are you hungrier than a 5th-grader? U-46 high-schoolers are

Gifford Street senior Robbie Stark has a healthy 19-year-old appetite.

Yet, every day for lunch, he receives the same fare as a 7-year-old.

"We're served the same lunches as are made for elementary students," Stark told the Elgin Area School District U-46 board Monday.

"It's not adequate nutrition."

Gifford Street, the district's alternative high school, has an enrollment of about 220 students, according to Principal Morris Mallory.

The 100-year-old building has no kitchen to prepare its own meals, no milk machine and no water fountain. Lunches are delivered to students by food service workers who assemble the meals in a nearby staging area, Mallory said.

"The lunches here are not the same as at the comprehensive high schools," Mallory said. "They're basically prepackaged and shipped in."

The district's elementary school lunch menu serves a small entrée accompanied by two servings of fruit or vegetables and a carton of milk.

By contrast, the district's middle and high school fare includes a larger entrée accompanied by bread and milk, salad, fruit and juice.

"If you look at what's served, the students are getting a balanced meal," Mallory said. But for rapidly growing teenagers, these lunches are "oftentimes not enough, so they end up buying other foods from vending machines."

The pregnant students who attend the school's prenatal program are given cereal bars by the nurse's office to supplement their lunches, said Jessica Cullinane, the school's guidance counselor. "I hear (lunch) complaints by the week," she said.

Portions for school lunches are determined by the number of calories a youth needs each day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service

While active 6- and 7-year-olds need between 1,800 and 2,000 calories a day, an active 18-year-old could need as many as 3,200 calories, the department's guidelines say.

While lunch improvement has been a concern "over time" at Gifford Street, the school has limited space to work with, Mallory said.

"The district is working with us to make some changes," Mallory said, but he could not specify what those were.

Ideally, Mallory said, the school could use a hot-lunch line and a place to set up a salad bar.

Jeff King, U-46's executive director of operations who oversees the school lunch program, said Mallory spoke to him about improving conditions last fall.

"We're in a planning phase," King said. "We're looking to do something this summer."