Menus for D.C. Pilot Programs

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

D.C. Central Kitchen broke new ground yesterday, cooking meals from scratch for seven public schools in the District of Columbia as part of a pilot program. According to its published menu, lunch consisted of herb-roasted chicken, "oat roll," field corn summer succotash, and Shenandoah melon salad. The vegetarian option was summer pasta salad.

Central Kitchen staff is cooking meals in the kitchen at Kelly Miller Middle School and delivering the food to these six other schools:

* Thomas Elementary School, 650 Annacostia Ave. SE.

* Burrville Elementary School, 801 Division Ave. NE.

* Alton Elementary School, 533 48th Pl. NE.

* Kenilworth Elementary School, 1300 44th St. NE.

* Marshall Elementary School, 3100 Ft. Lincoln Dr. NE.

* Prospect LC, 920 F St. NE.

This pilot program marks the first time in recent memory that food has been cooked from scratch in D.C. public schools. Besides making these meals for school children, D.C.Central Kitchen sources produce from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to feed 4,500 people in shelters and soup kitchens on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, Revolution Foods is making "portable" meals for seven other schools, meaning the food is prepared and packaged at Revolution Foods' facility in Glen Burnie, MD, then delivered to the schools to be re-heated.

The lunch yesterday was baked ziti with "zesty hamburger" and cheese, cut vegetables, and fruit. The vegetarian alternate was listed as macaroni and cheesed with baked beans, cucumber salad and fresh fruit.

These are the seven school Revolution Foods is feeding:

* Amidon-Bowen Elementary, 401 Eye St. SW.

* Hearst Elementary School, 3950 37th St. NW.

* Anacostia Senior High School, 1601 16th St. SE.

* Eastern Senior High School, 1700 East Capitol St. NE.

* Johnson Middle School, 1400 Bruce Pl. SE.

* Wilson Senior High School, 3950 Chesapeake St. NW.

* Peabody Elementary School, 425 C St. NE.

Unfortunately, school officials won't let us see the meals being made or the food being served as part of their effort to tightly control information about the new food service. They've even instructed the contractors--D.C. Central Kitchen and Revolution Foods--not to talk to the press. Why feeding children should be shrouded in secrecy and at whose orders is a question that itself remains shrouded in secrecy.

Otherwise, if you would like to see the published menus for D.C. Central Kitchen and Revolution Foods, you can go to the DCPS website here and click on one of the schools in question.

D.C. Schools Attempt to Manage Food News

Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

School resumes here in the District of Columbia on Monday, Aug. 23, and I was hoping to give readers a first-hand glimpse of how D.C. Central Kitchen was cooking food from scratch for seven of the District's schools as part of a new pilot program. The world wants to know how the Central Kitchen, a non-profit agency that makes food for 4,500 of the city's homeless, manages to work fresh, local produce into kids' meals, and whether the kids actually eat it.

I had already talked to the Central Kitchen about it and gotten a green light. But after waiting nearly a week for clearance from the D.C. Public Schools' general counsel's office, the clock ran out on my proposal to be embedded in the kitchen at Kelly Miller Middle School, where the Central Kitchen staff will be preparing those meals. After many urgent messages to the schools' press secretary, Jennifer Calloway, I received an e-mail last night from someone named Katie Test, the communications coordinator for the Office of Family and Public Engagement.

Here's the text of Test's e-mail:

"I’ll be handling some of our media requests, and have been working on your proposal. We love the idea of you observing the DC Central Kitchen from-scratch lunch programs, and are pulling together a waiver for you to sign. We’d like to invite you and other interested reporters to observe the lunch period at one of our schools, and will also be able to set you up with interviews with key DCPS and DCCK personnel."

She continued:

"I’m sure you understand that back-to-school time, especially in the middle of an exciting new pilot program like this one, is extremely busy. We want to grant your request for access while being respectful of the work that needs to be done in the kitchen and the people who need to do it.

"So stay tuned! We’re getting the paperwork set up and I’ll be back in touch with a few potential dates that fit everyone’s schedules."

Of course I wasn't looking for dates that fit everyone's schedules. I just wanted to get into the Kelly Miller kitchen with my camera and notepad. Test seemed to have skated completely around my original request. So I asked her why I couldn't just play fly on the wall at Kelly Miller, the same way I have done at the central kitchen in Berkeley, Calif., in the "culinary boot camps" in Denver, in the kitchen at Washington Jesuit Academy.

This is how Test responded:

"Given your extensive background in the subject, I’m sure you completely understand the hectic nature of our kitchens during the start of school, especially while we’re piloting a brand new program. While we’re happy to revisit your request to embed for a longer period of time later in the year, we’d still like to have you come in to see how the meals are assembled and served during a lunch period in the next few weeks. I know from your conversations with Jennifer that you’re eager to get a peek, so this is the best solution to balance everyone’s needs."

She concluded:

"We’ll continue to get the paperwork in line, and if you are interested in lunch period access, I’ll identify some potential dates for access for a lunch period."

I translate all of this as meaning that the D.C. Public Schools, after getting so much bad press over the food Chartwells has been serving, is incredibly nervous about the launch of new pilot programs and feels they have to manage every little step the media take around it. But maybe after the dust settles they'll realize that what this is about, after all, is simply people cooking food and trying to make meals from the measly $1 worth of ingredients the federal meals program provides.

We get that. The next step is simply letting the tax-paying public know exactly how it's done. As far as good news for the schools goes, it's an almost guaranteed home run.

Something New in School Food: D.C. Central Kitchen's Local Food Connection

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The District of Columbia is about to embark on what may be the nation's most unorthodox public school feeding program: meals from scratch using locally farmed ingredients and made by a charitable social service agency whose primary mission is feeding the homeless and teaching ex-offenders how to cook.

Beginning next week, the agency in question--D.C. Central Kitchen--will set up shop at Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast Washington and get ready to start cooking meals for seven D.C. schools when classes resume Aug. 23. D.C. Central Kitchen was the winning bidder for one of two contracted pilot programs intended to provide some competition for Chartwells, the giant food services company that has been providing meals of mostly processed convenience foods to the city's 122 public schools for the past two years. Revolution Foods was chosen for the second project--catering "portable" meals to seven other schools.

As well as being the first time in recent memory that meals have been made from scratch in D.C. Public Schools, the program represents the culmination of innovative efforts by D.C. Central Kitchen to build a successful economic model around concepts that don't normally associate in the public mind: local farming, job training for the down-and-out, and feeding the indigent.

For the last several years, D.C. Central Kitchen has been building relationships with farmers in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and using discount produce purchased there at auction to make the 4,500 daily meals it serves each day in local shelters and soup kitchens. But some of that produce has also been going into a wholesale food business D.C. Central Kitchen has been quietly building on the side: selling fruits and vegetables at upscale grocers such as Wagshal's in Friendship Heights, making pizza sauce for trendy We the Pizza restaurant on Capitol Hill, among others.

Arrangements like these give local businesses an opportunity to express their philanthropy as part of everyday commerce, rather than digging into their pockets to make a donation. The proceeds, along with income from the kitchen's catering arm--Fresh Start Catering--help fund the kitchen's other programs. In fact, the wholesale produce and processing business has grown so much at D.C. Central Kitchen that there's no longer room for it at the charity's facilities at 2nd and D streets NW. The kitchen, which had already extended its operating hours and rents freezer facilities in suburban Maryland, is about to expand into an additional 6,500-square-foot space on Bladensburg Road NE.

The developments at D.C. Central Kitchen converge precisely with the public school system's recent efforts to introduce fresher, healthier foods, as well as the "Healthy Schools Act" approved earlier this year by the D.C. Council, which not only raises nutritional standards for school food but provides bonus funding for every meal that contains a locally grown component.

Mike Curtin, D.C. Central Kitchen's chief executive officer, said the charity wasn't looking to expand into the schools, but felt an obligation to offer its unique and entirely self-created position in the nascent local food distribution chain for the pilot project. He sees this as a chance to prove the validity of the organization's model for building an economical, self-sustaining food community around local resources, an approach sparked by Curtin's observation that the kitchen's regular purchases of hothouse tomatoes flown in from Belgium seemed out of whack.

D.C. Central Kitchen now buys tons of local tomatoes--sometimes blemished or otherwise unsuitable for sale commercially--and freezes them by the bucketful for future use in sauces. He sees huge potential business in other products, such as prepared carrots sticks for school snacks, or an entire line of dried local fruits that could be used in cereals, muffins and other goods. The kitchen also makes money transporting grassfed meats from Shenandoah processors to local restaurants, and Curtin believes the less desirable cuts--such as beef chuck--could easily end up as burgers on cafeteria trays as part of a bartering arrangement with restaurateurs.

Curtin said he expects next year to begin making "contract purchases" from local growers--meaning telling farmers what kind of produce to grow and how much. Such innovations are fueling excitement as well as an atmosphere of creative thinking around the possibilities for alternative food production outside the nation's capitol.

"I would prefer to supply all the stuff to D.C. schools rather than be the vendor" making the meals, Curtin said. "Providing 50,000 meals per day doesn't excite me as much as being the provider of the product."

D.C. Central Kitchen's bid for the pilot contract was "somewhat more" than the $2.70-per-meal benchmark the schools had set in their request for proposals, representing approximately the amount the federal government provides for a fully-subsidized school lunch. In a rare instance of a local government stepping forward with extra money for school meals, the "Healthy Schools" act kicks in an additional 10 cents for each breakfast and each lunch served. Curtin said he figures about $1 of the total goes toward ingredients, leaving a profit margin of between four and six percent for D.C. Central Kitchen--close to the industry average. He said the charity's off-premise work is more expensive than competitors' because D.C. Central Kitchen pays its workers more.

Cooks at D.C. Central Kitchen start at $12.50 per hour, compared to an industry average of $8 to $10 per hour, Curtin said. In addition, the kitchen pays 100 percent of the cost of health care, along with disability and life insurance, vacation and a 50 percent matching contribution to retirement savings. In the deal with D.C. schools, there's just one hitch: the kitchen can't use most of the cooks it trains because so many of them are convicted felons. D.C. Public Schools, he said, provided a long list of criminal categories they would not accept in settings populated mostly by children. Curtin said sex offenders and pedophiles already are excluded from D.C. Central Kitchen's training program.

The issue has come up before. When D.C. Central Kitchen was negotiating its contract to cook meals at the Washington Jesuit Academy--a private school for at-risk boys in Northeast Washington--board members there also raised concerns about the criminal backgrounds of the kitchen staff. But Curtin said he told them "that was a deal breaker," and the academy agreed to give it a try. So far, Curtin said, there have been no untoward incidents. Some of the cooks have even become mentors and role models for the students. The issue of giving second chances to offendors who have served their time, Curtin says, is one that deserves wider public debate.

"The food is the easy part" of the new pilot program, Curtin said. "The staffing issue is the hurdle."

These are the schools D.C. Central Kitchen is slated to begin serving meals made from scratch:

* Kelly Miller Middle School, 301 49th St. NE.

* Thomas Elementary School, 650 Annacostia Ave. SE.

* Burrville Elementary School, 801 Division Ave. NE.

* Alton Elementary School, 533 48th Pl. NE.

* Kenilworth Elementary School, 1300 44th St. NE.

* Marshall Elementary School, 3100 Ft. Lincoln Dr. NE.

* Propect LC, 920 F St. NE.

These, according to a list provided by Curtin, are the criminal background restrictions for employment at D.C. Public Schools:

Potential employees must provide "a signed affirmation stating whether or not they have been convicted of a crime, pleade nolo contendre, are on probation before judgment or placement of a case upon a stet docket, or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, for any sexual offenses or intra-family offenses in the District or their eqivalent in any other state or territory, or for any of the following felony offense or their equivalent in any other state or territory:

Murder, attempted murder, manslaughter or arson.

Assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, mayhem, malicious disfigurement, or threats to do bodily harm.

Burglary.

Robbery.

Kidnapping.

Illegal use or possession of a firearm.

Sexual offenses, including indecent exposure; promoting, procuring, compelling, soliciting, or engaging in prostitution; corrupting minors (sexual relations with children); molesting, voyeurism; committing sex acts in public; incest; rape; sexual assault; sexual battery or sexual abuse; but excluding sodomy between consenting adults.

Child abuse or cruelty to children; or

Unlawful possession of or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance."

A glass half-full perspective

By Constance Newman

I’m not too concerned about the lack of a clear vision for the future for DC school food. I thought the Tuesday night meeting was energizing in that there was a large attendance of concerned parents and other community members. It’s only been a year since Rhee’s team has tried to make change, and the hiring of Jeff Mills seems like a very good first step.

From the little he said, Mills seems to “get it” in terms of our interests in reducing processed food, increasing local produce, etc. I trust them when they say it’s hard to make big changes right away. The fact that they are removing flavored milk is huge (way beyond the vaunted Institute of Medicine standards), and now they have awarded contracts for pilot programs to two firms that are very committed to local, farm-fresh produce.

DCPS has been pushed by The Healthy Meals Act to make changes, so maybe they’re learning as they go. That’s okay with me. I’m thankful they are making Chartwells compete and that they’re open to new ideas. In fact, if they were forced to write a strategic plan right now, I’m afraid we wouldn’t like it.

Maybe they’ll figure out that it would be more cost-effective to hire a non-profit entity headed by a local chef. Jamie Oliver, DC style! They didn’t talk about it, but Cathal Armstrong and other chefs are supposedly going to take over food services at Tyler Elementary. That’s the model that many of us are more excited about. Not because they’re chefs, per se, though that is important, but because it’s a non-profit venture. I agree with Ed that the idea that there’s money to be made in school food service is highly suspect. Schools are prohibited by law from making a profit when running school lunch programs, but somehow private companies are allowed to?

I’d like to see a rigorous evaluation of the pilots and Chartwells. The fact that they are private probably complicates the ability of D.C. to publish information about food quality and cost structure (and that’s another problem with outsourcing to for-profit firms—lack of transparency). What is D.C. Public Schools going to use as their criteria? Tony Tata mentioned the need to serve healthy meals while keeping costs down and participation up. With more people watching, how is DCPS going to measure and demonstrate the successes and failures of the different models? What are the criteria that we’d like them to use?

And what was the ever-so-brief mention of a school garden program (“pilot”) that Jeff Mills said we’ll be hearing about in the future? It did seem like we weren’t getting a full picture of all of the models being discussed and/or planned, especially when this was mentioned rather surreptitiously. Hopefully there will be more good news in our future.

As Jody Tick said in her post yesterday, DCPS needs to involve the community directly at this experimental stage. We can help set the criteria they will use to measure whether the new and old models are really delivering. We can help engage parents to support school food reforms. An advisory committee sounds perfect.

Here’s to seeing the glass half full.

Constance Newman is a member of Parents for Better D.C. School Food

A Chef's Perspective on D.C.'s Pilot Food Programs

I crossed paths with Lisa Suriano at the Fed Up with Lunch blog, where readers voted her a "Titanium Spork" award for her crusading efforts on behalf of school food. Because her family provides school meals through their catering company in New Jersey, I asked Lisa if she would give us her view of the two pilot programs D.C. school officials have announced to serve upgraded menus in the coming year. Each will use private contractors to provide food for seven schools, one with "portable" meals delivered to the cafeteria, the other meals cooked from scratch on site. Lisa, recently returned from a trip to Italy to witness the progress school meal program in Rome, sent this guest post---Ed Bruske

Guest Post
By Lisa R. Suriano

When Mr. Bruske asked me to guest blog, he sent me the RFPs (request for proposals) that the D.C. schools submitted for their new, healthier pilot lunch programs. He was curious to find out my thoughts on the documents. Before I get into my response, perhaps I ought to briefly explain my background.

My name is Lisa Suriano. I have grown up with the school food industry as a figurative member of my family. My father, an exquisite culinarian, has owned a food service management and consulting company for my entire life and I now assist him in operating that business. This past May I completed a Masters of Science in Nutrition and Food Science. I also hold a deep passion for nutrition education. I have developed an efficient education program--Veggiecation--that enables schools and food service programs to collaborate in making positive change. Most recently, my fascination and devotion to school food led me to seek out an interview with Paolo Agostini, the official nutritionist of the Municipality of Rome, Italy. Rome prides itself on having one of the most progressive, nutritious and locally procured public school lunch programs in the world. (Stay tuned for a complete report on my visit.)

I perused the very thorough RFP from D.C. schools. It is a far-reaching and rather complex document. It should be applauded for addressing so many elements of the school food issue. (For instance, competitive foods, increased participation, a greater variety of nutrients). There is so much I would like to comment on, but I feel it's best to address the final products: the menu, the ingredients and the students' response and acceptance of it.

The sample menu and the guidelines are alright. They are balanced and varied for the most part. It would be nice to see an emphasis on other grains besides processed wheat and corn products. (Almost every meal contains one or the other.) I recognize that cooking grains requires more equipment and labor investment than serving a slice of bread. However, a grain such as whole-wheat couscous made into a salad or a side dish is incredibly quick cooking and very kid-friendly.

The guideline to feature green and orange vegetables was definitely positive. Yet, carrots and oranges were the only orange foods on the sample menus. Kids will eat pumpkin and butternut squash when it is properly presented (such as pumpkin chili or cinnamon-roasted butternut squash). I was hoping to see other orange vegetables suggested on the menus. Also, I found it interesting that there were no specific stipulations for the meat/protein component of the meal. I suppose this is perhaps too large a political issue to combat at this point. Still, I want to note that Rome's broad-minded approach to affording a higher-quality "center of the plate" component is to require that meat be served only two times, while pasta, fish, eggs and legumes round out the rest of the week.

On the surface, a menu can sound just fine. It is more important that whole foods are being used to create these menu items. From my experience, I know that quality food products are available on the market for schools to purchase in bulk. I also know that pricing for these products is determined heavily by commitment and usage. Therefore, I think a major key to producing these "from scratch meals" with high quality ingredients is to incentivize manufacturers with contracts for large purchases of healthy, whole food products.

For example, if pricing for an organic yogurt or locally produced yogurt can be negotiated down through bulk purchasing agreements, the success of this pilot program is more feasible. (I know that the New York City Department of Education has had success doing this with the local dairy company, Upstate Farms Yogurt.) I believe this could be accomplished with a greater number of other ingredients. Perhaps local producers could be favored for statewide supply contracts. Rome did this by giving preference and higher points to contractors that could guarantee the shortest amount of travel time "between harvest and intake." I am not sure that food service companies here could accomplish this independently, without the government's assistance and regional availabilities taken into account. I believe the District of Columbia Public Schools Office of Food Services would need to be involved, as well as other regional districts.

Finally, in order for this to be a sustainable program, the kids have to want and eat the food. I feel that no one, children in particular, will make healthy lifestyle choices without being educated and excited about their value and taste. Without fostering understanding first, efforts to improve nutrition will be futile. Nutrition education and connecting children personally to their food is a vital component of the success of any program.

If an environment that teaches about and values healthy food choices is created, the program will receive the support it needs internally (meaning, higher participation rates). But this requires the belief and encouragement of parents, teachers and administrators. Neither food service companies nor government initiatives can effect change on their own.

What School Food Dollars Really Buy

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A recent post at the Ethicurean blog reminds everyone that only a fraction of the $2.68 the federal government provides for a subsidized school lunch actually goes toward food. According to a 2008 study [PDF] released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a bit less than 40 percent--or $1.07--of that amount is spent on meal ingredients. Schools spend 44.4 percent of their budget on labor and 16.1 percent on "other expenses."

What kind of meal do you think you could make with $1?

Those figures are relevant to the pilot meal programs we've been analyzing this week. The request for proposals [RFPs] published by D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) call for vastly improved food in the two projects, one to deliver "portable" meals, the other to provide meals cooked from scratch.

But there's a further distinction to be made between school districts providing meals for their students and hiring contractors to make the food. Schools are non-profit entities. Contractors are in business to make a profit. So in addition to dealing with the math outlined above, the vendors who ostensibly will be fulfilling the contract requirements of these two pilot projects also will be looking to pocket some cash.

Those profits represent funds that could be used to improve the quality of the food kids ultimately see on their trays. If you look around the country, you will see that the most progressive public school meal programs are not centered around contractors, but are run by school districts that make their own food.

After Michelle Rhee took office as schools chancellor she essentially announced that D.C. schools were incompetent to run their own food program. DCPS' food service operation had racked up $30 million in deficits over three years. Declaring that serving food was not a "core competency" of public schools, Rhee hired Chartwells, a giant corporate food service company, to take over.

Now, after hiring a new in-house food service director, D.C. schools are indicating they want something better than the industrially processed convenience foods Chartwells has been serving. Is the answer simply hiring a different contractor? Or will schools in the nation's capitol eventually figure out how to turn $1 into a decent school meal on their own?

Beware Great Expectations for School Food

Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

If improving school food were as easy as writing more creative contract proposals for food vendors, everybody would be doing it, right?

That would seem to be one of the lessons to draw from two pilot meal projects set to begin here in the District of Columbia when school resumes later in August. Each project--one designed around catered meals, the other meals from scratch--would replace the industrially processed convenience foods now provided by the school systems hired food service provider--Chartwells--with meals constructed around hormone- and additive free milk, less fruit juice and more whole fruit, more whole grains, local produce, no high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats.

The outlines of the contract proposals make the meals sound revolutionary. The only drawback is, the vendors are being asked to provide these souped-up meals on the same, miserly budget that's being used to pay Chartwells, and that most schools struggle with to serve decent food to kids.

These days, there is a clamor rising for more stringent standards that would raise the quality of school food. But what most of the public does not understand is that school food service directors are struggling to make ends meet. The average school loses 35 cents on every lunch it serves. Food service directors live in mortal fear of more standards calling for things like more vegetables and whole grains that don't come with additional funding.

The school meal re-authorization legislation currently making its way through Congress, for instance, would provide a six-cent increase to the federal subsidy for lunch--currently $2.68--hardly enough to make any real dent in the problem.

The District of Columbia is one of those rare local jurisdictions that has stepped forward with more funding--more, even, than what federal law makers are offering. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" passed earlier this year by the D.C. Council, the city will provide 10 cents more for school breakfasts, 10 cents more for lunch, and a five-cent bonus for meals that contain locally-produced ingredients.

That could help boost the quality of food in D.C. Schools. But let's not forget that D.C. Public Schools have been running a deficit in food services of some $5 million dollars every year, or around 20 percent of the total food budget. There's nothing in the law that says the schools cannot simply use that extra cash from the city's treasury to pay down their ongoing debt.

There's no way to tell from contract proposals what the food served to kids will really be like. A good illustration of that is to simply peruse the daily school menus that Chartwells publishes online. The meals sounds great. It's only when you visit the cafeteria and see what's actually on kids' trays that you realize they are eating cheap convenience foods mostly reheated from pre-cooked, frozen components made in food factories hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

The only way to tell if there's a food revolution happening in D.C. schools is to show up in the cafeteria and see what kids are eating. And that's where parents can make a huge contribution. In Rome, for instance, parents play an integral role in the school food solution, making regular visits to school kitchens to inspect. Here, parents can insist on accompany their kids in the cafeteria. Take photos. Judge for yourself. Share what you learn.

That will be our objective when school resumes. Go here if you'd like to see a listing of the schools where the two pilot projects will be implemented.

What Does "Local" Mean for School Food?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

D.C. Schools are set to start two pilot meal programs that would require food vendors to supply at least 20 percent of ingredients from sources in the Mid-Atlantic region, defined as Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina and the District of Columbia.

Making school meals with local produce has been promoted as a way of serving fresher, more appetizing fruits and vegetables to kids and was embraced in "Healthy Schools" legislation recently approved by the D.C. Council. "Healthy Schools" also encourages schools to use produce grown according to "sustainable" farming methods.

The "Healthy Schools" act requires all public schools in the District to identify the sources of their meal ingredients and rewards the use of local products by providing a five-cent bonus for every meal that contains locally-sourced ingredients.

Up to now, fruits and vegetables in D.C. Public Schools have been provided by the school system's contracted food services provider--Chartwells--which relies for its purchases on a national food distribution system.

The salad mix served in D.C. schools, for instance, consists of shredded iceberg lettuce, carrots and purple cabbage grown and processed in California. Apples sometimes come from as far away as New Zealand. When I spent a week as an observer in the kitchen of my daughter's elementary school--H.D. Cooke--a mix of broccoli, carrots and cauliflower came from Mexico.

One of the reasons schools don't use more local produce is because local farmers are not connected to a large-scale distribution system. Keany produce, one of the area's larger distributors, located in Landover, MD, does offer customers locally-grown selections. D.C. Central Kitchen, which provides thousands of meals to the needy every day, and provides foods for some schools through it's catering arm, Fresh Start Catering, sources much of its produce from a food auction site in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

What difference does "local" make for school meals?

Most of the vegetables served in D.C. schools are never eaten because they are cooked to death and served as dull-looking side dishes that kids reject. Simply replacing those vegetables with locally-grown produce won't make any difference at all. Broccoli, after all, is still broccoli, whether it's grown in California or Maryland. It all comes down to kitchen skills and presentation.

In Berkeley, CA, where I worked for a week as a "kitchen lady" to see how one of the country's most progressive school food operations worked, vegetables rarely were served as side dishes. Instead, they were mixed into sauces and soups, or tossed into pasta and other dishes. Even so, the kids I served in the food line often went to great lengths to avoid vegetables.

Under the proposed pilot schemes, the 20 percent figure does not refer to a quantity of local produce, but is calculated according to price. In other words, local products are to represent 20 percent of the cost of food ingredients. Thus, if the local goods are more expensive, kids might see proportionately less of them on their trays.

This is just one more wrinkle food vendors involved in these pilot programs will have to deal with in order to comply with food service contracts loaded with new standards and requirements, but paid for with the same old budget. It's a tall order.

Getting Kids to Like School Lunch with Pennies to Spend

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

D.C. Public Schools are scheduled to contract two new pilot meal programs when school resumes in August--one pre-made or "portable" meals reheated, the other meals made from scratch--each serving seven schools across the city.

Yesterday we looked at the many ways school officials expect the hired contractors to upgrade the quality of food and adhere to numerous standards that don't apply to the schools' current food service provider, Chartwells, and all for the same meager allowance--$1.74 for breakfast, $2.68 for lunch--the federal government provides under its subsidized meal program.

Today we're going to look at how school officials expect the chosen contractors to drive up the number of students who participate in the meals programs. Increasing the number of students who choose the subsidized meals offered in schools--as opposed to bringing food from home, eating out of vending machines or off-campus, or perhaps not eating at all--brings more money into the program.

One strategy for helping school food budgets, for instance, is to serve breakfast in the classroom rather than in the cafeteria. Because breakfasts can be made easily and cheaply, a high participation rate in breakfast--as when the kids are all gathered together in class--can generate lots of federal reimbursement dollars that then can be used to improve the quality of lunch.

In Berkeley, CA, where I spent a week in the central kitchen earlier this year, the percentage of students who ate the breakfast provided at school exploded when the schools switched to serving breakfast in the classroom, from less than 9 percent to 61 percent system-wide. But breakfast is not served in the classroom in high school, since high-schoolers have schedules that change from day to day. Among elementary and middle schools, the participation rate skyrocketed to 96 percent.

"Contractor shall continue to increase breakfast participation at all grade levels of the program with emphasis on Breakfast in the Classroom," reads the schools' request for proposal [RFP] for portable meals. "The program shall include expansive marketing and a strong communication plan. In addition, the Contractor shall increase the participation in the national school lunch program at all grade levels."

To promote the new meals, the RFP states: "Contractor shall perform aggressive marketing and promotion campaigns aimed at meeting participation goals (through menu changes, new products, etc.)"

For the "portable" meals program, these are the schools involved and the targeted increases in participation rates:

* Amidon-Bowen Elementary, 401 Eye St. SW: from 45 percent breakfast participation to 85 percent, and 93 percent lunch participation to 95 percent.

* Hearst Elementary School, 3950 37th St. NW: from 13 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 54 percent lunch participation to 80 percent.

* Anacostia Senior High School, 1601 16th St. SE: from 11 percent breakfast participation to 50 percent, and 43 percent lunch participation to 75 percent.

* Eastern Senior High School, 1700 East Capitol St. NE: from 8 percent breakfast participation to 50 percent, and 34 percent lunch participation to 75 percent.

* Johnson Middle School, 1400 Bruce Pl. SE: from 29 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 80 percent lunch participation to 90 percent.

* Wilson Senior High School, 3950 Chesapeake St. NW: from 7 percent breakfast participation to 65 percent, and 15 percent lunch participation to 65 percent.

* Peabody Elementary School, 425 C St. NE: from 25 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 80 percent lunch participation to 90 percent.

These are the schools scheduled to begin receiving meals made from scratch, and the targeted participation rate improvements for those:

* Kelly Miller Middle School, 301 49th St. NE: from 25 percent breakfast participation to 50 percent, and 66 percent lunch participation to 80 percent.

* Thomas Elementary School, 650 Annacostia Ave. SE: from 57 percent breakfast participation to 72 percent, and 92 percent lunch participation to 95 percent.

* Burrville Elementary School, 801 Division Ave. NE: from 41 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 89 percent lunch participation to 95 percent.

* Alton Elementary School, 533 48th Pl. NE: from 40 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 79 percent lunch participation to 90 percent.

* Kenilworth Elementary School, 1300 44th St. NE: from 64 percent breakfast participation to 75 percent, and 92 percent lunch participation to 95 percent.

* Marshall Elementary School, 3100 Ft. Lincoln Dr. NE: from 52 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 69 percent lunch participation to 85 percent.

* Propect LC, 920 F St. NE: from 60 percent breakfast participation to 70 percent, and 87 percent lunch participation to 95 percent.

Even a cursory look at the schools involved in the two pilot projects reveals trends that generally hold true for all schools: more kids in disadvantaged and largely minority areas of the city participate in the federally-subsidized meal programs than white kids in more affluent areas. And participation falls off sharply as kids get older, regardless of ethnicity and economic status.

The participation targets in these proposals don't appear to be anything more than wild guesses. It will be a challenge to convince more affluent white families who may be sending meals from home to stop doing so and instead choose the food served in the cafeteria line.

Can better food drive droves of students to reconsider joining the subsidized food line?

There doesn't seem to be any reason why D.C. schools can't achieve nearly 100 percent breakfast participation if breakfast is served in the classroom, and that could provide a bounty of cash to make lunches better, especially if those in charge of school meals focus on making breakfast simpler, rather than the current fiesta of sugary, processed choices.

New School Food: Would You Buy a Used Car from this Man?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Two new pilot meals programs in D.C. schools purport to vastly upgrade meals served in the cafeteria, but at the same price schools are paying for the industrially processed convenience foods currently being served by the system's hired food service contractor, Chartwells.

It sounds a bit like taking your beat up old Chevy to a car dealer and asking to trade it in for a Rolls Royce. Wouldn't that be a great deal if you could get it? But how many car dealers like that do you know?

The two pilot programs, scheduled to begin when school resumes next month, each would serve seven schools, one delivering "portable" meals to be reheated on site, the other making food from scratch. The requests for proposals [RFPs] circulated earlier this year by D.C. Public Schools called for the price to be "revenue neutral" and as close as possible to current federal reimbursement rates, or $2.70 for lunch. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" recently passed by the D.C. Council, schools would receive an additional 10 cents support for lunch, plus five cents for meals that contain local produce.

Besides delivering foods free of hormones and antibiotics, free of artificial colorings and preservatives, free of high-fructose corn syrup and trans fats, and loaded with local produce and whole grains, the contracts call for the vendors to comply with a series of standards, including those contained in "Healthy Schools," Institute of Medicine standards circulated in 2007, and the "gold level" standards in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "HealthierUS Challenge."

Today we're going to look at those various standards to see what D.C. is asking these vendors to do for $2.70 (or $2.85).

"Healthy Schools," for instance, sets minimum and maximum calorie levels for meals at breakfast and lunch, and according to two different age groupings. Likewise, sodium is restricted at different levels for breakfast and lunch, and according to age. Vendors are required to provide the ingredients and nutritional content of each menu item, and list where their fruits and vegetables come from and whether the growers are engaged in sustainable agriculture practices.

The 2007 Institute of Medicine standards would apply to what it refers to as "Tier 1" foods in school meals. These are "food and fruits, vegetables, whole grains and related combination products and non-fat and low-fat dairy that are limited to 200 calories or less per portion as packaged and:

* No more than 35 percent of calories from fat

* Less than 10 percent of total calories from saturated fats

* Zero trans fats (less than or equal to 0.5 grams per serving)

* 35 percent or less from total sugars, except for yogurt with no more than 30 grams of total sugars, per 8-oz. portion as packaged

* Sodium content of 200 mg or less per potion as packaged."

The "gold" standard for "HealthierUS Challenge" requires the following:

* Students have at least one quarter-cup serving of vegetables to choose from every day of the week. Dark green or orange vegetables must be offered three or more times per week, and of the three at least two must be different. Cooked dry beans or peas (legumes) must be offered each week.

* A different fruit must be served every day. Under the "gold standard," the fruit must be fresh at least two days. Otherwise it can be frozen, canned or dried, or served as juice.

* Fruit juice (100 percent) can be counted as the "fruit" offering only once per week.

* At least one serving of "whole grain" food must be offered each day.

* Only low-fat and fat-free milk can be served.

After accounting for labor and overhead, most schools have less than $1 to spend on the ingredients for their meals. Do you think you could do all this on that kind of budget? Ever wonder why anyone would want to get into the business of catering school food?

Are Pilot Projects the Way Forward?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

If improving school food were simply a matter of writing better contracts for meal purveyors, everybody would be doing it, no?

D.C. Public Schools got some rosy press recently when they announced two pilot programs that would be serving meals vastly upgraded from the industrially processed convenience foods kids are eating now. Each program would feed seven of the city's public schools, one with "portable" or catered meals, the other with food made from scratch.

The food requirements are state of the art: hormone- and antibiotic-free milk, no high-fructose corn syrup or artificial preservatives, colors or flavors, no canned fruit in syrup, no trans fats, beef no more than four times per month. The meals must meet proposed Institute of Medicine standards, meaning minimum and maximum calorie limits along with increased portions of orange and leafy green vegetables. And 20 percent of all produce must come from local sources.

And all of this is supposed to be provided at or near the current levels of federal reimbursement for school meals, meaning around $1.70 for breakfast and $2.70 for lunch. (Recently enacted "Healthy Schools" legislation provides a bit more: an extra 10 cents for breakfast and for lunch, and a five-cent bonus for meals that contain local produce.)

Sounds like a tall order. The deadline for food service companies to submit their proposals was June 1. And that's to begin meal service when school resumes later in August. As far as we know, the proposals are still under review, so the process is wrapped in secrecy. But we'll be looking at these two pilot programs in more detail in the coming days, and hopefully have even more to share when the winning bids are announced.