On Lake Road and Friberg-Strunk Street, Oak Tree Station is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2024. This establishment, coincidentally, is right across the street from Union High School (UHS). Fortunately, UHS has an open campus during lunch since the school is near 192nd and 164th, two streets littered with restaurants.
This rule does not only benefit the students who drive, but also those who do not as the recent addition of food trucks right across the street from campus will allow for quick access to more food options.
Due to Camas High School (CHS) being quite far from a large number of restaurants and food markets, the student body has a closed campus during lunch.
In total, there are five different places to get food at CHS that are linked to the students’ lunch accounts. At CHS, students are provided far fewer options for lunch compared to the plethora of restaurants that UHS students have just a quick drive away.
Students at CHS have admitted to wanting more options of places to eat but because of the location of the school, there are not many viable options except for food trucks.
“I would like to see food trucks, specifically authentic taco trucks, Indian food and Indonesian food,” CHS sophomore Caleb Caballero said.
A Google form was sent out to thirty different students and many different opinions were conveyed, but a resounding majority expressed a desire for additional options, mainly in the form of food trucks, to be added to the campus.
“If food trucks were available at CHS, I’d eat from them every day,” CHS sophomore Branford Bae said.
Logistically, this would take a lot of work. Kelly O’Rourke, principal at CHS, explained that the measures it would take, may not outweigh the benefits.
“When you start bringing in [third parties] on a regular basis, now you start going down that liability issue,” O’Rourke said. These liabilities mostly refer to the nutrition requirements that the state of Washington has in place.
The food and nutrition company by law, also has to provide enough food for those students regardless of if a food truck is going to come to campus. Profit would decrease significantly for whatever company CHS would hire.
“When you bring the food trucks in, they really don’t buy the stuff,” O’Rourke said. O’Rourke recounted the events of a similar situation at her previous school; students were super excited about additional food options, however, when the school made this concept a reality, the students did not uphold what was deemed their end of the bargain.
The administration worries that the food trucks, once delivered to the students, would quickly become the new normal, easing the excitement and desire to order food from there.
