Cafeteria Respect

The Child Nutrition Director for Asheville City Schools has been circulating a letter that she’s asking everyone to sign on to and send to our local legislators. The North Carolina legislature added $25 per student to the proposed budget to help cover the costs of meeting the new healthy nutrition standards in elementary schools. The trick now is to get our elected officials to keep that funding in the budget.

As the Child Nutrition Director explained, this is important for several reasons. While $25 per student won’t cover what it really costs to feed a child healthy meals for the year, it opens the door. Until now, they have not gotten anything like this from the local government. It opens the door to requesting more funding later and also for expanding the program to reach middle schools.

A few weeks ago I facilitated a workshop session focused on how to overcome obstacles to healthy eating in schools. All of the participants in my small group were child nutrition staff – from a director to a cook. They struggled to find things they could actually control and change. It takes a lot of time to prepare fresh produce and healthy meals from scratch. Often they go straight from cleaning up breakfast to quickly preparing for the lunch rush. The stringent storage regulations, calorie standards, and financial guidelines create a very small box for the child nutrition staff in which to operate. They want to do things differently, but bump up against the familiar obstacles of time and money.

Then the Asheville Child Nutrition Director stood up and offered a chance for change. She told the group about this proposed budget and how it could start to make a difference for them. When the small groups reported back to all the workshop participants, she told the large group about this letter. Everyone eagerly asked for copies and wanted to know how they could help spread the word.

Why is this so important? There’s a pervasive misunderstanding about how school food works. The Child Nutrition programs in schools run like independent businesses. They get their funding from the federal reimbursements for free and reduced lunches: $2.40/free lunch, $2.00/reduced lunch, and $0.23/paid lunch. On that income, they pay salaries, purchase all the food, buy supplies, and pay schools for “the privilege of doing business” on-site. The common notion is that school cafeterias get big chunks of money from school districts. Not so. And the reimbursement rates are so low, that’s why cafeterias usually have to resort to selling a la carte items to make some real income.

It’s a tangled mess. But I’m encouraged by the fact that the NC Health & Wellness Trust Fund is creating a study committee to investigate this issue – school lunch reimbursement rates and the financial challenges of Child Nutrition Programs. It’s a serious issue that needs some serious attention.

Critics (usually parents) are too quick to jump on cafeteria staff and say that school food stinks. Maybe there needs to be a public relations campaign to market all the good work being done. For example, Asheville City Schools sources nearly 20 products, such as sweet potatoes, cabbage, and lettuce, from local farmers in the region. Schools feature attractively presented salad plates and cashiers nudge students to buy a piece of fruit instead of candy. I hear first hand from the Child Nutrition staff that they are doing the best they can with limited resources and I know they deserve our respect. A great start would be for NC residents to send the letter "Healthy Children for the 21st Century" to your local legislator, then pass the word on to a friend. (See my blog entry with the same title for a copy of the letter and link to the NC General Assembly.)

Healthy Children for the 21st Century

Healthy Children for the 21st Century


Whereas the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs provide healthy meals to all North Carolina students enabling them to be ready to learn,

Whereas one in five children ages 5-11 in North Carolina is overweight,

Whereas the prevalence of childhood obesity has nearly tripled for adolescents in the past two decades,

Whereas North Carolina is in the top 10 states in the United States for the incidence of hypertension and diabetes,

Whereas health care costs in North Carolina associated with obesity related medical expenses cost North Carolina taxpayers more than $2.1 billion a year,

Whereas the North Carolina General Assembly has legislated and the State Board of Education has adopted Nutrition Standards for Elementary Schools in North Carolina schools requiring increased fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and foods high in fiber in school meals offered to students,

Now therefore be it resolved that ______________ supports the N.C. State Board of Education's proposed budget to provide $25 per pupil to enable local school districts to implement Nutrition Standards in elementary schools in the state.

And be it further resolved, that the $25 per elementary child be recurring funds.

___________________________________
Signature



Click on the NC General Assembly's "Who Represents Me" link to find out where to send your letter.