The front page of Thursday's Herald featured the headline, "School lunch crunch." The well-written and informative story goes on to detail the problems facing North Dakota grade schools and high schools that are trying to provide meals to their students.
The story cites a 2014 study that found 74 percent of state school districts need at least one piece of new kitchen equipment. Then the story goes on to describe problems in North Dakota school kitchens.
But what really caught my attention while I was reading the story was my memory of an article in the February issue of the Herald's Prairie Business magazine, which I read yesterday. It reported in glowing terms on the reopening of the Wilkerson Hall dining center at UND.
Some highlights from the Prairie Business story include:
▇ A 21,000-square-foot addition and the renovation of 40,000 square feet that includes "meeting and study spaces, a fireplace, an innovation lab, a convenience store, a coffee bar and an entertainment stage."
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The architects involved lumped all these trimmings under the term "gathering area."
▇ "Dining updates feature floor-to-ceiling windows to allow for natural lighting."
▇ "Eight new display cooking stations ... including allergy free options and Dakota Homestyle cuisine and a chef's demonstration platform."
▇ "Eleven walkways in coolers that will monitor the temperature of foods."
The director of dining services is quoted as saying, "There wasn't a model for this type of architecture anywhere else. We are setting the trend."
According to the story, the cost-just of the kitchen facility!-was $4 million. The story does not mention what the rest of this North Dakota Taj Mahal cost the taxpayer.
So, a suggestion to local school boards in North Dakota: If you have a problem in your school kitchen, just check with the folks who funded this "remodel" at UND, and hopefully your problems can be solved, too.
Mike Connor
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Starkweather, N.D.
