Campaign for Better Nutrition

San Francisco Unified School District Project:  Raising the Bar for School Meals

CBN is working with a community of partners to restructure and reform SFUSD’s approach to and implementation of nutrition programs in San Francisco’s public school system. Studies show that good nutrition is critical to cognitive development and the ability to set goals and achieve them. Thus, it is critical for San Francisco's children to receive proper nutrition and nutrition education to maximize their potential to learn so they can overcome poverty and be successful.

CBN is working with community partners and SFUSD do the following:

• In Progress:  Improve school meals dramatically, providing greater access for all children to higher quality food, more local and fresh produce, and more appetizing cooking methods and presentation.
• DONE!*  Eliminate systematic discrimination in the school nutrition program. This will benefit not only low income and minority students, but the entire school system as well, both socially and financially: Currently, students are easily identified as poor if they participate in the free lunch and breakfast program. This negatively effects them socially and eventually they skip meals to avoid the stigma. If this overt identification of income status were eliminated from the system, low income students will be more likely to apply for and participate in those programs. This has immediate and long-term benefits for the child. It also benefits the entire student body because it increases federal Title 1 funding to the school as well as federal support for all school meals.  *With hearty thanks to SFUSD's director and assistant director of nutrition services, Ed Wilkins and Zetta Reiker, CBN is thrilled to report that SFUSD has not only eliminated the separate lines for low-income and other meals, the district has eliminated the two-tiered lunch system altogether.  Instead, they have implemented one, higher quality service for all students that offers multiple entrees and salad bars at all middle and high schools in the city.  The work CBN and SFUSD did to change this system to serve the students better was a significant reason for the national change required in the new child nutrition bill signed into law in December 2010.
  

To facilitate CBN's work to help improve SFUSD's school nutrition program, our executive director has been on the SF Board of Education Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee since 2003.  In that time, the SFUSD program has improved significantly.  However, the food is still mass produced by a vendor across the country and delivered frozen on site.  Old and inadequate kitchen equipment often result in food that is served to the children either still partially frozen or dramatically overcooked.  This should improve somewhat next year (school year 2011/2012) as the result of federal stimulus funds granted to SFUSD for new equipment.  The funding is not enough, however, to meet even half of the need documented by the food service director.

The next step in improving SFUSD's school food is to conduct a feasibility study to determine the cost of various forms of improved meal service, from cooking the food in the city, using a local vendor, or paying for higher quality foods from the current vendor.  The San Francisco Food Bank is raising the funds to pay for this evaluation.  SFUSD will work with a team of consultants to put together the information needed and make a reliable and actionable analysis. 

To become involved in this work, please contact CBN or attend the regular Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee meetings.  You will find the meeting dates and location at www.sfusdfood.org.