Photo: Matt Vilgianti

The Washington Examiner reports that Turner Elementary students were fed raw green onions for a snack on Tuesday. The Southeast school is one of 53 in the District that receives funds to serve kids a vegetable or fruit as a snack.

The children did not react well to the scallions. At least one “made really gross-out faces” according to a first-grade teaching assistant. Several declared them “disgusting,” says an City Year corps volunteer who delivered them.

An official with the Office of the State Superintendent of Education says the onions were intended as a lunch ingredient but accidentally packaged as Tuesday’s snack. Turner’s principal was able to intercept most of the scallions, but some children did eat them.

A spokesperson for DCPS, which received $1.2 million this school year as part of the federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, expressed confidence to the Examiner that this was “an isolated event.” Let’s hope this is not a Reaganesque, let’s-feed-kids-ketchup-and-call-it-a-vegetable kind of moment.