Currently facing a shortage throughout the country, milk cartons served in many school cafeterias begin to dwindle. Powering through the famine, cafeterias in Tuscarora School District (TSD) schools have not been greatly affected by the lower numbers of milk cartons.
“There were two smaller plants that made the cartons. They were building a bigger plant, and those two smaller ones cut back their production quite a bit in anticipation of this larger plant opening, but it didn’t happen the way it was planned. So now they’re way behind on production and trying to catch up, but they’re having a hard time getting ahead,“ Tuscarora School District’s Metz manager Rhonda Lyons said.
Facing production issues, Galliker’s Dairy, the Pennsylvania-based company that manufactures the cartons, has been making a lot less cartons than normal. Typically supplying cartons to schools, as well as nursing homes and correctional facilities, Galliker’s cannot make the containers fast enough. Although many facilities can be seen struggling to provide cartons to their students, elders, customers, etc., TSD cafeterias carry on providing lunches with the Galliker’s-made cartons.
“It didn’t impact us as much as you would think. We were pretty strategic about being up front. If the kids didn’t want to take milk, they didn’t have to take milk. That way we didn’t waste a lot of milk. A lot of our kids prefer water anyway with lunch,” Mercersburg and Montgomery Elementary School principal Ryan Kaczmark said. “It was just more of being vigilant and talking with the kids and keeping my teachers informed.”
While elementary school cafeterias throughout the area continue to run smoothly, James Buchanan Middle School has been hit the hardest by the inadequacy of cartons.
“We have served water bottles on a couple days thus far. Certainly by the end of lunchtime is when we would run out of cartons on those specific days. I would say that every other day by the end of lunch, we probably have 50% of kids drinking water rather than milk,“ James Buchanan Middle School principal Zachary Kump said. “This isn’t a milk shortage, this is a carton shortage.”
Having to resort to water bottles on certain days, James Buchanan Middle School learns how to prepare for unexpected events such as a shortage. Though not needed throughout the entire district, TSD received waivers from the state of Pennsylvania to serve water bottles instead of milk cartons in case of emergency.
“We have received waivers since we have small bottles of water that the state has allowed us to use in place of milk. [The shortage] is expected to last until the end of January,” Lyons said.
Although anticipated to last for a few months, TSD has already begun enforcing short term solutions in order to ensure cafeterias run steadily. For example, James Buchanan High School serving milk in plastic containers instead of a cartons for breakfast establishes an added buffer to combat the crisis.
