Lake Road sees successful Go Light day

Lake Road Elementary and Poplar Bluff Middle School saw a successful launch of new milk dispensers Monday.

The change is a pilot program partnered with National Dairy Management and Midwest Dairy Council, Hubert, Chartwells and Prairie Farms to install milk dispensers and gather research.

Dixie Harden, food service director with the district, said the first day with the dispensers went well.

Dixie Harden, food service director with the district, replaces one of the chocolate milk bags in the new milk dispenser.DAR/Michael Shine

“It’s been awesome,” she said. “We had a little congestion at the middle school, but we’re going to move one of the dispensers tomorrow.”

Along with the move from carton milk, the schools made the switch to glass cups and plastic trays. Harden said there was one spill at each school and the one at Lake Road was from one student accidentally bumping into another.

As part of the pilot program, the schools took data last week about the amount of milk thrown away each day and will continue to count it in order to get a comparison. Harden said last week during breakfast at Lake Road, students dumped around nine liters of chocolate milk on one day. On Monday, about four to five liters were dumped.

First grader Sophia Taylor taking a drink of her chocolate milk.DAR/Michael Shine

To prepare for the switch, the students at Lake Road received a lesson on the machines last week. Harden said they talked about what the machines do and how they work.

“They were excited and asked a lot of questions,” she said.

Tamara Melton, director of nutrition and stainability with Chartwells, said conversations about milk dispensers were already going on at the corporate level. However, the R-I district reached out asking about a program for it and thus became one of two school districts in the country to take part in the pilot program.

Harden said if it goes well at these two schools, she’d like to see milk dispensers on the other campuses in the next year.