Milk Move Has Students Drinking Outside The Box Central Valley Schools Test Cost-Reducing Pouches
It was the end of an era at three Central Valley elementary schools Monday as students traded in traditional gable-topped milk cartons for space-age plastic pouches.
Just one question: How do you get a straw in these things?
About 1,250 students at Liberty Lake, South Pines and Ponderosa elementaries spent lunch time wrestling with the pouches, which experts say reduce waste by 80 percent, cost slightly less to produce and keep milk colder.
Although larger school districts around the nation have used the wobbly pouches for several years, Central Valley is the first district in the Spokane area to try them.
“It’s a big change for us,” said Central Valley food services supervisor Gary Pannell. “We’ve probably had 30 years with cartons.”
A small advertising blitz prepared students for the change, said Pannell, who watched the action Monday at Liberty Lake.
Despite advice from how-to posters stuck on cafeteria walls and a video on the art of piercing a milk pouch, some kids needed a little coaching.
Jordan Collins, 7, jabbed her pouch once, twice, three times.
Nothing.
She leaned on the pouch with her elbow, creating a bubble. She poked it again. Nope.
Meanwhile, 6-year-old Kyle Gunn put a little too much muscle into it, sending his straw sailing in one side of the pouch and out the other.
A chocolate milk puddle dribbled onto his tray.
A group of fifth-grade girls squealed as each of them punctured a pouch. Teacher Teresa Gothmann jumped away as one student took a mighty stab.
“I think I’m more nervous than they are,” she laughed.
The secret, it turned out, was pushing - not stabbing - the pointed end of the straw at an angle.
The three elementaries are part of a pilot program this week. Inland Northwest Dairies will switch all Central Valley elementaries to pouches May 3.
Other districts, including Spokane, Cheney and Mead, plan to convert to pouches in the next few months, said Inland Northwest Dairies sales manager Jerrald Barsten.
Some teachers wondered about the wisdom of arming kids with pointed straws and a container with serious squirting power.
“We’re a little worried about that,” admitted Pannell.
But Liberty Lake kids gave them high ratings.
The chocolate milk was “way chocolate-ier,” said one boy.
By midlunch, hamburgers sat lonely on trays as kids blew through their straws, inflating the empty pouches.
In the old days, cartons were rarely empty when they hit the garbage can, said a happy Pannell.
“Milk is becoming cool right before our eyes,” he said.