Prince William County Public Schools providing taste test for potential new lunch menu items

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Prince William County Public Schools is hosting a food show as more than a dozen new items will appear in what the school district describes as its "Super Bowl."

FOX 5 was invited for a first look at some of the 19 food items being featured Thursday night at Charles J. Colgan Sr. High School in Manassas. The taste test is giving students a say in what is on deck for breakfast and lunch at a time when school districts have drifted away from the staples of pizza, cheeseburgers and French Fries.

Some of items being made in the kitchen Thursday were chicken drumsticks coated in BBQ sauce, a marinated veggie salad and even a sunrise smoothie.

"We are constantly looking for new menu items that will please our students," said Samantha Ronk, the administrative coordinator for guest experience of the School Food and Nutrition Services for Prince William County Public Schools.

"We received some feedback about our mashed potatoes and we have reformulated the recipe and we are very interested in our guest opinions," said Adam Russo, the director of School Food and Nutrition Services for the school district.

Those opinions often make their way to social media as the debate over school lunch nutrition standards continues.

"We will engage them via social media, ask them to come back, invite them back to try an item and really try to win their business back because quite frankly they are our customers," said Russo.

Those customers are nearly 90,000 students in Prince William County.

"In order for us to have money, we have to serve food and we are very interested in feedback from our guests, so when they tell us of an issue they have, that is an opportunity for us to get better," Russo said.

After the taste test, students, parents and staff will vote on which items make the cut for the next school year.