A local North Texas student was allegedly served moldy food by her middle school last Friday, prompting outrage from her mother.
The alleged incident happened at Byrd Middle School on April 28 in the Duncanville Independent School District, where the girl snapped a photograph of what appeared to be mold on the bottom of a slice of pizza she was served during lunch period.
“My baby has been complaining to me about her food for some time now, but to be honest, as a parent, I thought that she was just being spoiled and wanted me to bring her Chick-fil-A and bring her food and stuff every day. When she sent me that picture, I’m like wait a minute! I kind of felt bad,” said KeAndrae Banks, the girl’s mother, speaking with WFAA.
Duncanville ISD is not the only North Texas school system to draw scrutiny because of the quality of its lunches in the last year.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, parents at Grand Prairie ISD became alarmed when pictures began circulating of various school lunch items, which resulted in calls for the district to switch food vendors.
Similar complaints were raised at Dallas ISD last year, too, with one school board trustee acknowledging how widespread the problem really was, as reported in The Dallas Express.
“Mold has been found in our food all across the district. It’s very disturbing. So, there is a problem, and it needs to be addressed,” said Dallas ISD Trustee Maxie Johnson, according to WFAA.
The problem was bad enough that at least one local nonprofit mobilized to provide nutritious meals for Dallas ISD students, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Dallas ISD has long suffered from inefficient operations and poor student achievement outcomes, with respondents to a poll last September suggesting the district was being mismanaged by its leadership.
“At the end of the day, if that was your child that you was [sic] sending to that school, would you want your child eating that same food?” Banks said to WFAA.
For its part, Duncanville ISD claimed that the moldy pizza Banks’ daughter discovered was an isolated incident. It further claimed that a review of all the other pizzas in stock did not contain mold, and the vendor that provided the food will be conducting a quality-control check.
