Bomb hoax raises alarm of threat response — Homer police to coordinate with school over report of bomb

By Carey Restino

Homer Tribune

A recent incident at Homer High School raises some questions and some eyebrows when a crudely made fake bomb prompted school officials to evacuate the school, but no call was made to 911.

Homer High students hardly had time to get comfortable Thursday morning before they were evacuated from the building after school administrators found what they thought might be a bomb.

According to Homer Police Chief Mark Robl, a teacher first saw the device in the stairwell around 8:15 a.m. and thought it might be a discarded science project, so pushed it out of the way. The “suspicious device” was made from an unmarked coffee can with an eraser taped to the outside of it and a couple of wires sticking out of the can’s plastic top.

A press release issued by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District said that Principal Allan Gee saw a “suspicious device” in a stairwell at the school and responded by evacuating around 370 students and staff.

“I found a suspicious device, and while realizing it was a week of senior pranks, took this seriously, and secured the area following the (Kenai Peninsula Borough School District) Emergency Action Procedure,” Gee is quoted in the release.

A call was made between 8:35 and 8:50 a.m., Robl said, by the principal’s secretary to Homer Police Sgt. Lary Kuhns saying there was a senior prank issue that required police response, but that the principal wanted to keep the response “low key.”

“There was no sense of urgency conveyed in that phone call,” Robl said.

Kuhns told the school secretary he would respond in the next 10 to 15 minutes, Robl said.

Bound to smile — Author visit generates volumes of laughter, creativity, fun puns

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Mike Thaler, author of the “Black Lagoon” youth book series, visits with students at Tustumena Elementary School in Kasilof last week. He also visited Kaleidoscope School of Arts and Science in Kenai and Redoubt Elementary School in Soldotna.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Children often get the answers to many important questions while pursuing their educations, but kids in a few schools last week got clarity on some of life’s sillier queries, such as, how would an injured pig get to the hospital?

“In a ham-bulance,” said Mike Thaler, author of the “Black Lagoon” series of books, to the uproars of children during a workshop he led at Tustumena Elementary School last Wednesday.

He also visited Kaleidoscope and Redoubt Elementary schools, through funding from library fundraisers and PTAs, as well as several others around the peninsula and in the Anchorage area.

Thaler, up from Oregon, has written more than 250 books and received awards for some in the “Black Lagoon” series, including “The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon,” for which he earned a Kids Choice Award in 1999. He has also received awards from the Society of Illustrators, the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library Association, the National Cartoonists Society and others.

Thaler also is known as “The Riddle King,” and said he enjoys using riddles as a way to stimulate children’s interests in learning and creating.

“He loves working with the kids,” said his wife, Patty Thaler. “He goes around the world doing this. We were just in Spain in October, and we’ve been to Alaska visiting schools before, but this is our first time in this area.”

Clean scene — Custodian sets school story time with magic carpet art

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Tim Marsh creates light and dark shading in the reading area carpet with his vacuum cleaner, depending on which way he pushes the carpet knap.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Renoir and his paintbrush. Michelangelo and his chisel. Ansel Adams and his camera. And now, Tim Marsh and his vacuum cleaner. Though Marsh, of Soldotna, isn’t as famous as these art masters distinguished throughout history, his fans are every bit as adoring of his creations.

“The kids love it. They’re excited to see what he drew, to try to guess what it is. Some kids will stop by in the morning before school to go look at what he did,” said Bobbie Baldwin, teacher and librarian at Redoubt Elementary School in Soldotna.

Photo courtesy of Tim Marsh. Tim Marsh, custodian at Redoubt Elementary School, created this design of Simba and Pumba, characters from, “The Lion King” in the library at the school. He creates a new design every day in the green carpet students sit on for story time in the library.

Marsh’s medium is a 9-by-12-foot patch of green, low-knap carpet in the story time area of Redoubt’s library. On it he spends five or so minutes a night creating fanciful renderings — dinosaurs, wild animals, characters from books, holiday scenes and many more — with nothing more than his vacuum, a stick, his feet and his imagination.

“All these little tricks I’ve come up with carpet. Who knew, right?” Marsh said.

Marsh has been working at Redoubt for four years, by way of Kodiak, Montana, growing up in Wyoming and being born in Anchorage. About two years ago he was going about his nightly cleaning duties as usual, when he noticed something about the patch of carpet the kids sit on for story time in the library. When he ran his vacuum over it, drawing the knap one direction or the other, the appearance changed from light green to dark green.

There can be an element of the monotonous in a custodial job — same thing, day in, day out — and the novelty piqued Marsh’s interest. He started experimenting with the possibilities of his discovery.

“When I first noticed it I just started making checkerboards, triangles, things like that. And then I thought, ‘I’ll make it fun for the kids,’” Marsh said.

A lion crouches in front of an elephant.

So he started “drawing” into the carpet. Sometimes just general scenes, or holiday-related if Christmas, Valentine’s Day or the like were near. Then he started asking the librarian what books she was reading to the various classes, and drew characters, creatures or scenes to go along with a book.

“And the story was, when the kids come in and sit on the carpet and the librarian starts to read the story to them, Redoubt’s magic carpet brings them into the story,” he said.

Outdoors curriculum housed in new school

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Growing up in Alaska is not like growing up in Florida, Texas, California or any other place in the Lower 48. It is a unique experience to live and mature in the 49th state, so why shouldn’t the educational experience of this area be as individualized and specific?

That is a question that Greatland Adventure Academy, a new charter school opening in Soldotna in the fall 2013, hopes to address. Its aim is to enhance middle school-aged children’s learning though “experimental learning,” which includes more emphasis on place-based education, and more focus on movement, music and time outdoors.

“What we are hoping to do here is not new; it’s being done elsewhere. We just want to open another opportunity for a different learning model than what our district currently offers for seventh and eighth grades,” said Teresa Moyer, a GAA academic board policy member.

Enrollment for the charter school was held earlier this month and 42 students signed up, near the maximum capacity before rolling into a sign-up lottery. There is also potential for the school to expand to encompass grades six through 12 in the future.

GAA will provide concentrated academics in the four core areas of math, science, language arts and history during the morning hours of operation. The school will be staffed with full-time certified teacher/facilitators and GAA will focus on differentiated learning.

The primary component of this, Moyer said, is in planning an educational program that will be most efficient to maximize each student’s potential, providing learning experiences using research-based models to promote integrated learning for all students, providing time to pursue excellence.

“It’s setting them on a course that meets exactly where they are,” Moyer said. “Students will be assisted in determining their interests and skills, and provided opportunity to be exposed to, and enriched in, those components as they emerge. This model will also allow them to explore a subject or interest deeper, rather than the stop-and-go, stop-and-go of going through classes based on when the bell rings.”

Vouch for school choice? Bill opens can of worms, possible public funding to private schools

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Of the several education-related bills working their way through the Legislature this session, the most divisive is one that would open the door to public funds going to private schools. Since its introduction, the debate surrounding House Joint Resolution 1 has been charged with provocative cries of quality in education, accountability, parental choice, separation of church and state, and free-market competition.

The measure has been stalled in the House Education Committee. If passed by the Legislature, HJR 1 would require a vote of the people, since it would amend the Alaska Constitution regarding state aid for education. The measure proposes eliminating language stating, “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The change has generated a lot of debate. Much of it regards the lack of detail in the proposal. What would it mean, exactly? Vouchers? Would all private schools be eligible for state funding? Would the state increase funding to cover the expanded pool of eligible private students and schools? None of these questions are addressed in HJR 1.

“Does that mean we now eliminate the tax-exempt status of churches and church property? Seems only fair. Are private schools, if funded, now going to be required to be held to all the requirements of public schools? For example, standards testing, teacher evaluations and accreditations?” asked Neil Denny, a teacher in Ninilchik, addressing Rep. Kurt Olson and House Speaker Rep. Mike Chenault in a town hall meeting the legislators held in Soldotna on March 23.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District opposes the measure, in part because of the lack of specificity.

“We really encourage the two bodies to really vet the bill rather than just pass it to the people and let the people decide. Our concern is if they do pass it to the people that the people will approve it — because it sounds appealing on the surface — without thoroughly thinking it through,” said Dr. Steve Atwater, KPBSD superintendent.

Public funds going to private schools could have many ramifications of concern to the district. One is of funding. Would the state pony up a bigger budget for education to cover the expansion of students funded, or spread thin the current level of funding?

“The idea is you incentivize public schools to do better by creating competition, but you basically water everything down and nothing works,” said LaDawn Druce, president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association, addressing Reps. Olson and Chenault in the March 23 meeting.

Teacher tenure tenuous — Legislature considering variety of education-related measures

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Tenure for teachers will be a longer time coming, and potentially harder to keep, if measures making their way through the Legislature this session come to pass.

House Bill 162 would change the evaluation period for nontenured teachers in Alaska from three years to five. The measure is supported by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District because it would give districts more flexibility, financially and in terms of evaluation, said Dr. Steve Atwater, KPBSD superintendent.

If state and local funding doesn’t come through as hoped, and/or if unexpected costs crop up, the district can be in a position of having to cut its budget in the spring. Cutting staff is the area of largest impact, since that’s what the vast majority of the district’s budget is spent on. Having a larger pool of teachers from which to cut — those without tenure — makes that trimming easier, Atwater said.

“With the fiscal uncertainty that we face we never know how much money we’re getting, so if we have a greater pool of untenured teachers to work with — you’ve got to eliminate 55 teachers tomorrow — then you can make better decisions in terms of what happens. You hate to think of it in those terms, but right now we’re two-thirds tenured and one-third not tenured, so if we had a greater pool to work with we would, I think, meet the needs of our children better,” Atwater said.

Having two extra years in which to evaluate teachers also is helpful, Atwater said, especially in cases where a teacher’s placement has varied. Because of the year-to-year cycle of state education funding, sometimes the district will pink slip a teacher, due to conservative budgeting, then is able to hire him or her back if the district’s funding and budgetary outlook improves. But those teachers don’t always end up teaching the same thing or even in the same school.

“Some end up working at three different buildings in three years,” Atwater said. “At the end of that third year they’ve been evaluated three different ways, often coming in later in the year. To have it go to five years gives us a better chance to look at all teachers in a good way.”

Atwater said that the lengthened evaluation period could be beneficial to teachers, giving a teacher who hasn’t quite cleared the bar in three years an extra two to improve.

“If you are on the cusp after three years, in the past they may not have gotten tenure. So the other side of that coin is you’re showing improvement, you’re close, this allows that teacher to keep going so we don’t have to play our hand after three years,” Atwater said.

Teachers, however, don’t see it as beneficial, said LaDawn Druce, president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association. It’s two extra years of continued uncertainty about their future, she said.

“I would not invest in my community, and that’s what we want our teachers to do is invest in our communities, and I would not feel comfortable doing that until I got hired back that sixth year. That’s a long time,” she said.

Wes Andrews, counselor at Skyview High School, spoke to Reps. Mike Chenault and Kurt Olson in a legislative town hall meeting in Soldotna on March 23, of his concern that extending tenure to five years could hurt Alaska’s ability to recruit teachers. In most states, he said, tenure comes in three years.

“It’s hard for me to say that this would help Alaska attract good teachers, since 70 percent of our teachers do come from other states. Saying, ‘OK, we’re going to have a longer tenure track process than almost any other state’ doesn’t seem like it would be a good attractant for us,” he said.

New view on Soldotna high schools — board votes to consolidate, reconfigure

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Skyview students Austin Laber and James Gallagher gave a presentation advocating keeping the high schools separate.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

It’s official — with a vote of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education at its meeting Monday night, Soldotna and Skyview high schools will be consolidated by fall 2015, and possibly even the year before.

What’s less official is how, exactly, all the details will work out, especially regarding seventh through ninth grades, as the future configuration of those middle school grades has yet to be decided. What was determined Monday is board support for the idea that combining Skyview and SoHi’s 10th through 12th grades into one school is a way to provide diverse course offerings and other opportunities jeopardized by the continuing trend of declining enrollment in the schools.

“The reason we’re doing this is because the opportunities it creates for kids in having a unified high school, and we can’t forget that. And the sooner we can get to that, I think, the better it’s going to be,” said board member Tim Navarre.

According to the district, enrollment at both Skyview and SoHi in the 2006-07 school year was 1,051 students. It’s projected to drop to 815 in the 2013-14 school year and to 766 by 2016-17. But the decline isn’t evenly distributed, with 150 to 160 incoming freshmen expected at SoHi and just 50 at Skyview.

Neither school is housing its designed capacity of students, with Skyview at 323 students this year and SoHi at 472, though neither building is big enough to take on the combined population of all current Soldotna ninth- through 12th-graders. So the district is proposing to house the approximately 600 10th- through 12th-grade students at SoHi, and figure out another plan for the area’s seventh through ninth grades.

“Is there a perfect solution to any of this? Probably not. There are a lot of factors there that need to be put together. Our ultimate goal here is to provide better programs for the kids at the high school level, and this option does that for us,” said Sean Dusek, assistant superintendent of instruction.

Several parents speaking at the 7 p.m. board meeting and during a preceding public hearing at 6 p.m. supported the change if it will mean a more-rounded high school experience.

Scott Miller graduated from SoHi before the newer Skyview opened and the area’s high school population was split. He remembers having several more foreign-language and advanced-placement classes to choose from than do his daughters, currently in grades seven and 10.

“I see the opportunities that I had that my daughters don’t have,” he said.

Amy Hogue, a school district employee and mom with kids in second and fourth grades, sees a similar lack of opportunities, not at all what she would expect in schools serving an urban — by Alaska standards — area.

“When I look at my children’s future and the high school offerings I find it shameful that a city school is not offering a great selection of courses for kids,” she said.

Hogue has seen class offerings decline as enrollment has declined, resulting in a shrinking per-student funding allotment from the state.

“I don’t like the road we’re on. I support the configuration, changing it,” she said. “… Ten years ago this was brought up. I felt 10 years ago we could have made a change and not been where we’re at now.”

Students speak, compete — Never fear nerves in forensics meet

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Derek Lewis, a sixth-grader from Redoubt Elementary, took first place in the humorous poetry, single session during the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Forensics Competition, held Saturday at Tustumena Elementary School. Several hundred students competed in the final event for the season.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked that so many people have a fear of public speaking that, if given the choice, “More people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

For some, this fear likely started in childhood, standing in front of peers while awkwardly stammering through a report of some kind. This was not the scene Saturday though, during the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Forensics Competition, held at Tustumena Elementary School.

Not to be confused with crime-scene sleuthing, forensics in this case refers to speaking to a group in a structured, deliberate manner that is intended to entertain, inform or influence the listening audience. Its goal is the very opposite of teaching kids to be scared of public speaking.

The borough finals meet was held over the weekend with 12 borough elementary schools and 161 students competing.

Having already won the school-level forensics competitions, Saturday’s gathering represented the cream of the crop. To advance to the boroughwide level, these young orators had already displayed the ability to not just transmit information, but emotionally move the audience with their presentation.

Tustumena Elementary Principal Doug Hayman, who had a strong contingent of kids competing in the event, said that a comprehensive rubric is used to judge the participants. It reviews, for instance, their selection, eye contact, poise, pace, conclusion, articulation, volume, facial expressions and body involvement.

“As the kids get older and more experienced, the presentations seem more dramatic,” Hayman said, adding that in Tustumena’s own school-level competition, some of the sixth-graders received high scores.

Derek Lewis, from Redoubt Elementary, was one of those who received a near-perfect score, placing first in the humorous poetry, single, grade six division Saturday for his animated rendition of “A Boy Named Sue,” written by Shel Silverstein and made famous by country music legend Johnny Cash.

“I wanted something no one had ever performed,” Lewis said.

School district, unions head back to bargaining table

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Negotiating teams for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, Kenai Peninsula Education Association and Education Support Association are headed back to the bargaining table Wednesday with just one remaining area left to hammer out in contract talks that have been ongoing since last January.

Negotiations went before nonbinding arbitration in October, with the arbitrator’s advisory report released in December. Teams reconvened Jan. 22, where the district presented what it termed its “last best offer.”

The proposal adopts many of the arbitrator’s recommendations, including an annual salary increase of 2 percent each of the three years of the contract. In health care, the district is offering to shoulder a greater portion of the cost of the district’s self-funded insurance, lowering participating employees’ monthly premium to $291 per month, down from the $340 per month they were paying in fiscal year 2012. The district also agrees to eliminate the additional amount employees were contributing for dependent, spouse and family coverage.

The district also agreed to do away with the 50-50 split on cost overruns of the health care plan. In the previous contract, if health care expenditures exceeded the predetermined monthly contributions from the district and employees, those cost overruns were split 50 percent by employees and 50 percent by the district. Now if there are cost overruns, they will be paid at a rate of 80 percent by the district in the first year of the contract (fiscal year 2013), 83 percent in year two (FY2014) and 85 percent in year three (FY2015), with employees paying the resultant 20 percent in year one, 17 percent in year two and 15 percent in year three.

All this was welcome news to the associations in the closed-to-the-public bargaining session Jan. 22. There was just one deviation in the district’s offer from the arbitrator’s recommendation. The district is proposing changes to the membership and authority of the Health Care Committee, to prevent changes in health care coverage without agreement by district representatives and association members.

The district is proposing to eliminate one KPEA seat and add three seats to be appointed by the superintendent. Currently the committee consists of four KPEA members, three KPESA members and one Kenai Peninsula Administrator Association member. The district also proposes requiring a supermajority of 75 percent in any vote on changes to district benefits.

Also in the proposal is the stipulation that the district would not be required to adopt changes if they resulted in violations of established laws or regulations, altered the administration or management of health care benefits, resulted in a cost increase to the plan of more than 5 percent or would be detrimental to the financial interests of the district, as determined by the superintendent.

Teacher contract talks near finish — Arbitrator issues recommendations on salary, benefits

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

The arbitrator had spoken. The next meeting of the bargaining teams for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, the Kenai Peninsula Education and Education Support associations will demonstrate how much of the arbitrator’s advice will be heeded.

After a year of negotiations, including a round of mediation, between the district and associations failed to produce an agreed-upon contract to cover a three-year period beginning with the current 2012-13 school year, the bargaining teams presented their proposals and arguments regarding the final few sticking points of the contract to arbitrator Kathryn T. Whalen on Oct. 1 and 2, with written arguments being accepted up through Nov. 21. Whalen issued her recommendation Dec. 21.

The format is nonbinding arbitration, so her judgment does not automatically settle the remaining disputes, most notably over financial issues of salary and health insurance. The teams still must meet and come to agreement, but now have the guidance of an unbiased third party to help break the stalemate.

Pegge Erkeneff, communications specialist for KPBSD, is unavailable for comment until Jan. 2, though she sent a press release Dec. 21 stating that the KPBSD Board of Education would review the arbitrator’s advisory award/opinion in executive session Jan. 14, and that the district and associations’ bargaining teams would meet at 1 p.m. Jan. 22.

LaDawn Druce, president of KPEA, said that the association teams were eager to get back to the table and were pleased with the arbitrator’s recommendations.

“I just felt like overall it was a real good decision and very favorable for our cause going back to the table. Hopefully, given that, we can come to some kind of an agreement very quickly,” she said.

The biggest sticking points have been regarding the highest-dollar areas of the contract: salary and health care.

Rate debate — State school board adds student performance to teacher evaluations

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

A controversial move by the Alaska State Board of Education on Friday to incorporate student performance into teachers’ job evaluations has educators bristling at what feels to them to be an attempt to fit unstandardizable qualities into a standardized system of evaluation.

There are many influences on how a student performs that are out of a teacher’s control — home life, health, whether they got a good night’s sleep, whether they ate a good breakfast, etc. Evaluating a teacher’s performance in part based on how students perform on standardized testing is unfair, said Wayne Floyd, a 30-plus-year teacher at Nikiski North Star Elementary, and one of more than 900 people who submitted comments on the state school board proposal.

“The student population is a moving target that’s never the same from year to year. It’s not something that can be predicted, just based on the dynamics of each year’s class. One year you can have a huge overload of kids with learning issues and need for support shadows, or kids with abuse at home, and all that comes to school with them. And the problem is noneducators are treating the education system like it’s a factory where you put standardized products into the factory and out the other end pops a high-quality product,” he said.

“In teaching you only have them for six hours out of a 24-hour day. You’re supposed to be making the biggest impact on them, when actually the biggest impact is outside of your environment. Let’s say you’re a dentist and the amount of money you can collect from the dental process is based on the success of clients not having cavities. This is like grading a dentist on how much candy a kid eats and cavities they have,” Floyd said.

The new rule stipulates that by the 2015-16 school year, 20 percent of a teacher’s assessment will be based on student performance, increasing to 50 percent of the evaluation by 2018-19. Districts can use four ways to measure student performance in evaluating its teachers, but one must be a statewide standardized test.

The standardized test piece is particularly worrisome, given debate over the accuracy of gauging student performance through that approach.

“Research has shown that written tests only measure a certain percentage. Maybe about 40 percent of the student population can be measured accurately that way. There are other things that need to come into play addressing the other areas of learning. Now you’re running into huge variability and opinions. That’s the problem with humanities  — they’ve tried to make it scientific for years and there’s always that human element that throws science out of the window at times,” Floyd said.

Floyd is not opposed to the idea of holding teachers accountable for the achievement of their students, but wants to see it done in a way that is reasonable and takes into account the reality that student performance hinges on more than just teacher effectiveness.

“It’s fine that we’re pushing for improvements but it needs to be fair. I think the biggest problem we have here is people on both sides agree that student achievement needs to be included, but there’s a disagreement on how to handle it. If it’s going to be a fair system it needs to be based on factors that are predictable and measurable, and in most cases that’s not going to happen year after year,” Floyd said.

Health on the menu — Student Nutrition Services digs into new school year

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. At left, third-graders Tristan Edmondson, in black, and Michael Garrett, in red, work their way through the lunch line Monday at Soldotna Elementary School, served by Abby Rodgers and Gavin Noblin, both in fourth grade.

Redoubt Reporter

To the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Student Nutritional Services workers at Soldotna Elementary School on Monday, lunch was a source of pride, an example of the carefully prepared and portioned nutritional efforts for which the school is being honored with a Bronze Award in the nationwide Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It’s exciting,” said Thresea Grilley, who this fall began her eighth year with SNS. But more important than an award is the knowledge that the kids are getting good fuel for their brains and bodies. Her two boys went through SoEl, after all, so she’s a mom interested in healthy meals, as well as a lunch lady hired to provide them.

So is Gerri Habighorst, starting her 11th year with SNS. Her daughter was in sixth grade at SoEl when she started working there. Habighorst said she’s seen school lunches get healthier and healthier over the years.

“A pretzel and cheese — they used to call that lunch,” Grilley said, ringing up the contest of kids’ trays as they filed past with their lunches — according to the menu, “BBQ chicken flatbread, golden corn nuggets, chilled mixed fruit, Jungle crackers and milk.”

“We’ve seen some definite improvements in nutrition over the years,” said Habighorst.

To SNS administration, the meal isn’t a collection of entrée, sides and a beverage as much as it is a careful calculus of USDA school lunch nutritional guidelines — so many whole grains balanced with a certain amount of protein and vegetables providing calcium, vitamins and minerals, all without going over limits of calories, fat and sodium. On top of that, it’s also a balancing act between food, transportation and labor costs against the price charged for the meals, the amount of reimbursement funding the USDA contributes and the balance covered by the district.

“We are asked to provide a complete meal for the cost of a cup of coffee — about four bucks,” said Dean Hamburg, director of SNS for KPBSD. “Fruit, vegetables, whole grains, protein, labor, transportation — all that for the price of a cup of coffee. But we are pleased to take on that challenge for our kids.”

To Taylor King, though, a fourth-grader at SoEl and a kitchen helper Monday, lunch

Taylor King, fourth grade, serves an entrée portion to Zack Rodman, second grade, during lunch at Soldotna Elementary on Monday. According to the menu, it’s a barbecue chicken flatbread. According to Taylor, it’s “Uuuhhhmmm, a taco thing.”

was corn, white or — more preferable to many students — chocolate milk, a scoop of fruit, a packet of crackers with Scooby-Doo on the wrapper, and, “Uuuhhhmmm, a taco thing.”

“There’s meat in it. And cheese,” she added after leaning in for a closer inspection.

There’s the challenge of school meals these days — carefully balanced nutrients delivered in a carefully budgeted system that kids still care to eat.

There are a few changes to SNS’s recipe for approaching that challenge this school year.