UNPAID SCHOOL MEAL POLICIES

USDA requires school districts to have a policy for collecting school meal fees and on how to handle situations when a student who is not certified to receive free school meals  arrives in the cafeteria without cash in hand or in his or her school meals account. A recent survey of 40 of the 50 largest school districts in the country found:

• Only 12 of the 40 school districts have a single unpaid meal policy for all students. Most have two policies: one for younger students (generally elementary schools) and one for older students (generally middle and high schools). Policies typically are more generous for elementary school students, allowing them to receive school meals, regardless of their ability to pay, or permitting them to charge additional meals on their school meals accounts.
• 13 of the 40 districts provide meals to all students for all meals, regardless of whether they can pay; 10 do not provide any meals or grace period to secondary students who cannot pay; 17 districts place a maximum number of meals they will provide to either secondary school students or to all students with debt.

Source: Food Research & Action Council, 9/17, Unpaid School Meals

Win-win of local food in school lunches

Wayne County, New York, is the state’s biggest apple producer. Yet in 2013, public schools served lunches that included apples from Washington. At the end of the lunch period, the lovely, whole Washington apples ended up mostly uneaten in the garbage.

Foodlink, a Rochester, NY, food bank, set about solving the problem. A recent study showed that children were more likely to eat sliced fruit than whole. Since Foodlink had the facilities to wash, slice and package apples into portions, it decided to purchase apples from local farmers, process them, and sell them back to local schools.The program has been a success. Since July 2014, Foodlink has purchased 3.8 million pounds of local apples, investing $600,000 into the local agricultural economy. Children are eating the apple slices. And Foodlink uses revenue from apple sales in its own kitchen to prepare scratch-cooked meals for local school lunches, after-school and summer programs.

Source: NPR, 8/1/17, Investing in Apples

SCHOOL NUTRITION STANDARDS

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue this week celebrated and defended the Trump administration's recent controversial move to relax some of the school-nutrition standards championed by former first lady Michelle Obama. Perdue spoke to the crowd of some 7,000 professionals at the School Nutrition Association’s (SNA) annual conference in Atlanta. Perdue was adamant that the administration’s new policy isn't a step backward. He asserted that the administration is simply “freezing things in place to help us evaluate what the palatability, what the acceptance of these changes have been and to reduce the burdens on schools to get you back to feeding kids and not doing paperwork so much anymore.” Perdue said he wants SNA to help USDA make school nutrition standards better.

Source: Politico, 7/13/17, School Meal Standards

ANTI-”SHAMING” LEGISLATION PROPOSED

Congresswoman Rosa Delauro (D-CT) added a provision to a bill funding FY 2018 discretionary programs for USDA and other agencies that would direct USDA to prevent school-lunch staff from "shaming" a student who does not have enough money for school lunches. DeLauro’s action came as the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies advanced the bill to the full Appropriations Committee. The bill calls for cutting USDA by about $1 billion, which is significantly less than President Trump's  $3.7 billion proposed cut.

Source: DTNPF, 7/3/17, Lunch Shaming

SCHOOLS “SHAMING” CHILDREN TO GET LUNCH MONEY

Holding children publicly accountable for unpaid school lunch bills — by throwing away their food, providing a less desirable alternative lunch, or branding them with markers — is often referred to as “lunch shaming.” The practice is widespread — a 2014 USDA report found that nearly half of all school districts used some form of shaming to compel parents to pay bills. (About 45% withheld the hot meal and gave a cold sandwich, while 3% denied food entirely.) The problem of meal debt is not new, but the issue has received more attention recently because the Agriculture Department, which oversees school meal programs, imposed a July 1 deadline for states to establish policies on how to treat children whose parents cannot pay for food. In 2016, the School Nutrition Association published a review of almost 1,000 school lunch programs, finding that nearly 75% of districts had unpaid meal debt.  A Department guidance document suggests that districts ask their community for help, for example through “random acts of kindness” funding and school fundraisers.

Source: NYT, 4/30/17, Lunch Shaming

NO SHAME IN SCHOOL MEALS

Every day students come to school without a way to pay for lunch. In most places it's up to the school to decide what happens next. Some schools will provide kids an alternative lunch, like a cold cheese sandwich; others will sometimes provide hot lunch, but require students do chores, have their hand stamped, or wear a wristband showing they owe money; and some will deny students lunch altogether. But a new Hunger-Free Students' Bill of Rights Act in New Mexico requires that all students have access to the same lunch and ends practices like trashing lunches that have been served to students who can't pay, or making students do chores to work off debt. Texas and California are already working on similar legislation. With policies to handle unpaid meals all over the map, the USDA will soon require that all school districts have a policy on what to do when kids can't pay. By July 1, those policies must be in writing and communicated to staff, parents and the community.

Source: NPR, 4/17/17, School Meal Shaming

National School Breakfast Week:

            You know those sayings that you’ve heard so many times in your life that they just become ingrained in the back of your mind? For me, the phrase ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ fits into this category. Although I know breakfast is important, I think the phrase has been used so much that many people, including myself, forget just why. With National School Breakfast Week coming up this week, I think it is important to be reminded why breakfast is so valuable to a child’s education.

            According to the USDA, in 2015, over 90,000 schools served school breakfast to 14 million students each day. Out of these 14 million breakfasts, 11 million each day were free breakfasts for students from low-income families. That means that without meal assistance, approximately 11 million students everyday are at risk of going hungry! By feeding students school breakfasts, they are more likely to reach higher levels of achievement in reading and math, have better concentration, participate in class, and retain more of what they learn. Studies also show that offering free school breakfast results in better attendance records. The point is that, the 2.3 billion school breakfasts served annually, many of these free or reduced, greatly help children and especially those from low income families, to have a more equal playing field in life. Hunger reinforces the cycle of poverty. Arriving to school hungry every day prevents students from reaching their potential. By providing breakfast to those who cannot afford it, kids are no longer held back by hunger and are given a fairer chance to be successful in school.

            Knowing the importance of eating breakfast, what are some ways to spread awareness of the value of school breakfasts? Some ideas for this year’s National School Breakfast Week include creating a school breakfast challenge! Students are handed a card at the beginning of the week and receive a hole punch every day they purchase a breakfast item. At the end of the week, students who have 5 hole punches are entered into a raffle! Cards can be downloaded at www.schoolnutrition.org/NSBW. Other ideas include having a school art contest or a classroom photo contest centered on the topic of National School Breakfast Week! Posting pictures online or hanging artwork around the school can help spark dialogue on the importance of school breakfast. For more National School Breakfast Week ideas, visit the School Nutrition Association website at the following link: http://schoolnutrition.org/Meetings/Events/NSBW/2017/getstarted/

-- Jamie Oriol

SLU student and

GardenShare intern

School Breakfast Grants & Game On Grants

Action for Healthy Kids combats childhood obesity, undernourishment, and physical inactivity by helping schools become healthier places where kids can lead healthier lives. The organization partners with dedicated volunteers — teachers, students, moms, dads, and school-wellness experts — from within the ranks of its more than sixty-thousand-strong network to create healthful school changes.

To that end, the organization has issued a Request for Proposals for its 2017-18 Breakfast for Healthy Kids and Game on Grants programs. Award amounts will be based on building enrollment, project type, potential impact of the project, and a school's ability to mobilize parents and students around school-wellness initiatives.

1) School Breakfast Grants: Up to five hundred and fifty schools will receive grant awards ranging between $500 and $3,000 to support increased breakfast participation. Eligible schools may apply to pilot or expand their school breakfast programs (including alternative or universal alternative).

2) Game On Grants: Up to five hundred schools will be awarded grants for physical activity and nutrition initiatives that support schools in becoming nationally recognized as a health-promoting school. Grants will range between $500 and $1,000.

Deadline: April 7, 2017
 http://www.actionforhealthykids.org/tools-for-schools/apply-for-grants

Child nutrition bill dies

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has announced that no agreement could be reached in this Congressional session on the pending Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR), which is now more than a year overdue. The CNR is the every-five-year Congressional review and reauthorization of all child nutrition programs, including the school lunch program. The 2010 CNR ushered in new school nutrition standards (more whole grains and more fruits and vegetables). Just two years later, the School Nutrition Association proposed rolling back some of those reforms, a call taken up by conservative House Republicans. The Senate Agriculture Committee hammered out a bipartisan agreement that seemed to satisfy the major stakeholders. But the bill drafted by the House Education & the Workforce Committee would have weakened nutrition standards, significantly limited the Community Eligibility Provision, allowed more junk food on school campuses, and created a three-state block grant pilot for school meals, an idea which some saw as a precursor to dismantling the entire National School Lunch Program.

Source: Civil Eats, 12/7/16, School Meals

School Food Support Initiative

Chef Ann Foundation is currently accepting applications for an 18-month technical assistance program, which can help districts improve their meal programs and transition to scratch cook operations. Their goal is to provide up to seven school districts with technical assistance, strategic planning and funding opportunities to improve their operations. Applications will be accepted through November 30, 2016 and more details about program services and eligibility criteria, as well as a link to the online application can be found on the School Food Support Initiative Webpage. 

Watertown schools poised to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students

According to WWNY-TV, the Watertown School System has applied to take advantage of the community eligibility provision, which will allow them to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of parent's income.

While there is sometimes pushback on these programs, the reality can be that it's cheaper to just serve everyone than to do the administrative work required to separate paid from free and collect the funds from those families who are expected to pay.

Providing meals to all also takes away any stigma attached to free meals and helps ensure that the children who really do need this assistance are getting it.

Many schools in the North Country have high poverty rates and could consider doing the same.

SCHOOL LUNCH GUIDELINES LEAD TO BETTER HEALTH

New federal school lunch guidelines are doing what they were designed to do: improving nutrition for school-age children and reducing childhood obesity, according to a study recently published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Under the new guidelines, the total calories of the students' lunch choices decreased 4%. Calories from fat decreased 18% and those from sodium decreased 8%. Researchers combined lunch sales data collected at the register with data on student absences to show how the nutritional content of National School Lunch Program (NSLP) entrées chosen by students varied across different socioeconomic and demographic groups and how the choices affected their health. The responses to the school lunch nutritional changes varied by socioeconomic and demographic groups. Students who received free and reduced-price lunches were more likely to choose entrées with a higher fat content and less likely to select entrées with higher sodium content. Students paying full price made opposite choices--they were more likely to choose high-salt entrees and reject those high in fat.

Source: MedicalXPress, 10/13/16, School Lunch Changes

Registration opens for Junior Iron Chef!

Registration Opens OnlineNovember 1st at 9 a.m.!

FORM teams of 3 to 5 middle or high school age youth CREATE healthy recipes using a combination of Local & USDA commodity foods   COMPETE against teams from Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lewis & St. Lawrence counties

JOIN US! March 11, 2017 at  A.A.K. Middle School, Potsdam Check out event guidelines, see pictures and videos, & browse recipes at ncjrironchef.org

Important! Registration is limited to one team per division (middle or high school) per school or organization.  See more updates to the competition atncjrironchef.org. North Country Jr. Iron Chef is a project of the Health Initiative.

North Country Jr. Iron Chef | Health Initiative, Inc. |315.261.4760|ncjrironchef@gethealthyslc.org| ncjrironchef.org

SENATE CHILD NUTRITION BILL HUNG UP ON VERIFICATION

One provision has hung up a Senate vote to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. The provision aims to strengthen the process school districts must use to ensure that only poor and near-poor children get their meals free or at very low cost. Now, districts must verify the family incomes of 3,000 of the applications they’ve approved — or 3% if that’s less. The revised version would establish a sliding scale, generally beginning at 10,000 or 10% and ratcheting down to the current minimum, based on several performance measures. One sticking point is the sheer number of applications school districts must begin with. Another is that the bill enlarges the pool from which the applications must be pulled to include families that don’t have to apply in order for their kids to get free meals, such as those who receive SNAP and those with foster kids. But schools may not be able to get all their parents to verify their incomes. The families may have no fixed address or not read English well enough to understand a verification notice. And, because the bill would allow states to provide low-income parents with $30 a month to partly compensate for their higher food costs during the summer, these children — and all their family members — could also lose out on meals when school isn’t in session during the summer.

Source: Poverty & Policy, 10/11/16, Child Nutrition Bill

MODELING A BETTER PLAN TO REDUCE HUNGER

New research using innovative simulation modelling techniques demonstrates that SNAP, WIC, and School Lunch Program are key components of a plan to reduce food insecurity. The research finds that:

• If SNAP benefits were increased by basing the calculation on the Low Cost Food Plan, SNAP-participant families with children would have an 8% increase in purchasing power for food. This would result in 5.3% of currently food-insecure people in families with children becoming food secure.
• If WIC age-eligibility were increased to age 6, 2.2% of newly eligible 5-year-olds’ families would increase their food purchasing power. This change would result in 1.5% of WIC-eligible food-insecure 5-year-olds and their families becoming food secure.
• Over 13% of all children whose family food purchasing power was increased by their participation in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs shifted into a higher income-to-poverty-ratio category. This resulted in 1.7% of food-insecure families of students participating in school lunches and 1% of food-insecure families of students participating in school breakfasts to become fully food secure in 2014.

Source: Children’s Health Watch, 9/20/16, Modeling Change

SCHOOL MEALS IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY, DIET, WEIGHT

Mounting evidence shows that healthy school meals play a key role in supporting children’s well-being, including alleviating food insecurity; improving dietary intake; and mitigating obesity.  Several recent studies published in prestigious journals and reports that find:

• Free or reduced-price school lunches reduce food insecurity by at least 3.8 percent;
• Access to school breakfast decreases the risk of food insecurity and breakfast-skipping, especially among low-income children;
• New nutrition standards, which took effect in the 2012-2013 school year, improve nutritional outcomes among students, including improvements in fruit and vegetable selection and consumption;
• Low-income students who eat both school breakfast and lunch have significantly better overall diet quality than their peers who do not eat school meals; and
• Participation in federally funded nutrition programs  provided in child care, preschool, school, or summer settings is associated with a significantly lower body mass index among young, low-income children.

Source: Food Research & Action Council, 8/23/16, School Meal Benefits

Summer bounty: tomatoes

The tomato is the edible, red fruit of Solanum lycopersicum, commonly known as atomato plant, which belongs to the nightshade family, Solanaceae.

The species originated in Central and South America. The Nahuatl (Aztec language) word tomatl gave rise to the Spanish word "tomate", where the English word tomato comes from.

Numerous varieties of tomato are widely grown in temperate climates across the world, with greenhouses allowing its production throughout the year and in cooler areas. The plants typically grow to 1–3 meters (3–10 ft) in height and have a weak stem that often sprawls over the ground and vines over other plants. It is a perennial in its native habitat, and grown as an annual in temperate climates. An average common tomato weighs approximately 4 oz.

Its use as a food originated in Mexico, and spread throughout the world following the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Tomato is consumed in diverse ways, including raw, as an ingredient in many dishes, sauces,salads, and drinks. While tomatoes are botanically berry-type fruits, they are considered culinary vegetables, being ingredients of savory meals

Open-faced tomato sandwiches with creamy cucumber spread

Ingredients

1 (8-oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened

2 cucumbers, seeds removed, diced (about 2 cups)

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

2 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill

2 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for serving

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, plus more for serving

6 Texas Toast slices or other thick white bread slices, toasted

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb. assorted fresh tomatoes (about 3 large), cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Thinly sliced chives

Preparation

1. Stir together cream cheese, cucumbers, red onion, dill, mint, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl until well combined.

2. Spread about 1/4 cup of the cucumber mixture onto each slice of the toasted bread. Top each with 2 to 3 tomato slices, and drizzle each with 1 teaspoon olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with chives, salt, and pepper. Serve immediately

Source:  myrecipes.com

Encouraging schools to purchase from local farms

New York State recently announced that it has been chosen to participate in a USDA Pilot Project for Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables.  The goal of the Pilot Project is to develop additional opportunities for schools to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables with USDA funding, and develop new relationships with farmers, growers, produce wholesalers, and distributors.  The USDA pilot program encourages the use of locally-grown foods in National School Lunch Programs by allowing locally-grown foods to be purchased with the USDA funds annually allocated to schools.

Ø  This is a great opportunity for vendors such as farmers, growers, aggregators, food hubsand the like to grow and expand their local customer base.

Ø  Vendors of all sizes - both large and small - have the opportunity to tap into an existing and expanding market.

Ø  Over 800 New York State School Districts currently in the National School Lunch Program have USDA funding to procure commodities through this pilot program.

Ø  Fresh fruits and vegetables, minimally processed items such as apple slices, as well as IQF frozen locally sourced produce, are all eligible under this program for year-round purchasing.

Ø  As soon as a vendor is placed on the USDA Approved Vendor list, they can begin to do business under the pilot program.

Please follow this link to begin your application process:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/selling-food/pilot-project

CONGRESS FIGHTS OVER SCHOOL MEAL MONEY

Rep. Todd Rokita’s (R-IN) proposal in the House child nutrition bill to conduct a block grant pilot program for school meals in three states “demonstrates a broader effort to block grant the school meal program nationwide,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). If the pilot program were approved, states that were chosen would be given a capped amount of money for child nutrition programs to use as they see fit. The one requirement is that they provide at least one affordable meal a day. According to the School Nutrition Association, block granting a program makes it easier to eliminate. The House bill also would raise the threshold for schools to participate in the community eligibility program to 60% of students in poverty, thus eliminating the ability of 7,000 schools to offer free lunch to all students, and would eliminate that option for 11,000 schools currently eligible but not participating.

Source: The Hill, 7/5/16, School Food Fight; Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 7/8/16, Child Nutrition Bill

REPUBLICANS PROPOSE TO TEST SCHOOL MEAL BLOCK GRANTS

House Republicans are proposing to test funding school meal programs through block grants as part of the House child nutrition reauthorization bill. If passed, the pilot would be tested in three yet-to-be-determined states. Republicans claim the Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016, which passed through committee last month, gives schools flexibility to find ways to help children and families in need. But critics, including the School Nutrition Association, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Food Research & Action Center, say participating schools would lose all paid-meal reimbursements and 6-cent-per-lunch reimbursements collected by meal programs certified as meeting federal nutrition standards.

Source: The Hill, 6/15/16, Block Grants