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Many thanks to all who responded and sincere apologies for the delay in summarizing.
 
Responses fell in 3 categories:
 
1)      Don’t even try:
            
Attempting gluten free hot lunch is a risky mistake, since trace amounts can make celiacs feel ill with head aches, tummy aches, tired, and impact their attention for learning.  
 
Young children are not emotionally equiped, nor should they be, to handle the pro-active role required to insure a safe meal. 
 
No matter how hard you work, and what a good plan you set up with the food service director, you will still have to depend on the kitchen workers to follow the plan. Make sure that every suggestion you make is understandable and doable by a worker who doesn't understand and doesn't care.
 
Adults are the authority figures for young children and are entrusted with keeping them safe.  Unfortunately, adults who won't get sick when your child gets gluten are not the place to put your trust.  


Insuring your child gets g.f. treats in the classroom and avoiding play dough or paper mache will be enough a challenge.
 
Plusses of packing lunch from home is that parents know exactly what is in the food both nutritionally as well as that it will be gf; kids have more time to eat since not waiting to go through the lunch line.
 
One person recommends relying on a thermos and says she has ideas on her blog:
 
http://glutenfreeislife.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/school-is-so-close-i-can-smell-it/
 
2)      It can work:      
 
My celiac is now in middle school and has worked very well to have his items either individually wrapped (hot v. cold) or entire tray wrapped after being taken out first from the place where it was cooked prior to transport.  You are doing the school district a real service to help them better understand necessary procedures around this (especially for a kid with life threatening allergies!).  I hope they see it that way.
 
3)       Either, “I’m interested because my child will be school age before long” or “We’ve been trying but not getting anywhere, so let us know what you learn.”
 
I (the summarizer) live in a fairly large school district (West Bend, WI), and they were already providing gf hot lunch for other kids before my son was recently diagnosed, however none at his school.  GF hot lunch is available only after a doctor fills out a form the school gave me verifying that he was biopsy diagnosed; similarly are only accommodating his low lactose diet because it was diagnosed via biopsy.  Unless I didn’t notice last May when we filled it out, I don’t think this was called a 504 plan.  I haven’t requested a 504 plan because I was afraid it would seem adversarial right off the bat and wanted to see if we could work things out cooperatively.
 
A complication that prevented offering gf hot lunch right away this fall was that the district changed food suppliers over the summer and the new supplier did not have any “allergen” lists available regarding their foods, so the director has been combing through ingredient lists for each food to determine allergen and gluten status. Food is heated in large containers at the high school and transferred to other schools to be kept warm and served.
 
 She also buys gluten free entree items from gluten free businesses, and these items are kept at the child’s school in the kitchen freezer and heated up on site in a toaster oven or microwave.  In addition, the director says that she has gone to the local Super-Walmart with parents to shop together for safe items that their child will eat to serve as replacements for items on the menu that their child can’t have; these items are also kept in the kitchen of the child’s school.  She and I haven’t done that yet.
 
The director and I met with the kitchen servers at my child’s school last week.  I could see right away that neither one wanted to be there and one looked especially put out, so I interrupted the agenda to say I could see they were really unhappy and that there was no point in continuing to try to set up hot lunch for my son, because unless they were completely “on board” with wanting to learn how to manage this situation, my son was going to end up getting sick and I couldn’t allow that (tearing up at this point, despite my best effort to be calm.)
 
The director intervened and backed up to explain to them that by federal law (ADA), the district was legally required to provide him gluten free hot lunch.  And while it would be an adjustment to learn how to accommodate a special diet, we would make a plan to make it manageable, we can do it and we legally have to do it.  Their attitude shifted for the better after that and we proceeded.
 
The plan is that I will review the month’s hot lunch menu with my son and choose the meals he wants.  I will email the list of dates to the director initially, but to the kitchen staff eventually, once we get the plan smoothed out.  Gluten free specialty items will be substituted for similar conventional gluten containing items; choices include: Ian’s Fish Pattie, LF; French Bread Pizza, LF; Fish Sticks; S’Better Chicken Fingers, Corn Dogs; Amy’s Rice Mac & Cheese, Asian noodle bowl; George 6” Pizza; gluten free buns and sesame bread sticks, pizza breadsticks, and wizard bisquits(whatever those are?!?).
 
The procedure we decided on for days when he will eat foods from the conventional menu is that upon arrival the kitchen servers will fix his tray first, cover it, and place in on the top rack of the warming unit until he comes through the line.  This way, they will avoid accidentally cross contaminating entire bins of food before he gets there and will not yet have any gluten crumbs on their gloves.  If they should handle gluten items before handling his food, they will change their gloves before handling his food.  We didn’t discuss what to do about cold items, but I intend to suggest that those are also scooped right away and set aside until his class comes through.
 
If my son liked gluten free bread and cold lunch type foods better, it would be easier to pack lunch from home every day.  He really prefers hot food and thinks every gluten free bread he’s tried so far is nasty (he didn’t like conventional bread much before he was diagnosed either.) I bought several new thermoses since the old one we had did not do a good job keeping food hot.  These new thermoses don’t do much better, despite following recommended procedures of preheating the thermos with very hot water 5-10 minutes before filling with hot food.
 
Thankfully, the food director also offered the option of having the kitchen staff heat food from home in the microwave or toaster oven just before he comes to lunch.  The procedure is that he stops by the kitchen to give them the dish we want heated for lunch before joining his line in the morning (kitchen staff is there for kids who eat breakfast at school).  I put a post it note on top with his name, date, and a short message about the requested method and length of heating.  They put it in the fridge and pull it out to heat when they come back at lunch time.  We started doing this last week and it has been working well.
 
Regarding seating, one person replied that they hoped cold lunch kids wouldn’t be segregated and another that sometimes kids with allergies are segregated.  In my son’s case, the principal suggested that they set up a separate card table against the wall near his class’ long table for my son and 2 friends of his choice to sit.  I like this arrangement because at the regular tables the kids have to keep scooching down to make room for more and more kids as they slowly get through the hot lunch line, and my celiac would certainly end up eating in the spot full of someone else’s wheat bread crumbs.  When he’s older, I expect he’ll become vigilant about eating out of his lunch box or over his tray.   But currently he absentmindedly sets his food down on the table no matter where we are (home, school, nasty picnic table at a park!!!)  The card table with chairs prevents the scooching problem and he always has an abundance of kids asking to eat with him at his table, so he’s not ostracized.
 
Best of luck to all others facing this issue.  Hope this helps.
 
Dawn Pilney
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