It's Time for the Inspector General to Investigate D.C. School Food

Why do D.C. cafeterias consistently lose money?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Was former D.C. schools Chief Operating Officer Anthony Tata pulling our leg when he told a room packed with parents and other concerned citizens in August 2010 that school cafeterias had been losing $11 million to $14 million every year on food service?

I was there, and I distinctly remember Tata saying school officials had "found a sweet spot" by hiring Chartwells, a giant food service company, to manage the cafeterias. Sitting next to him was the newly hired DCPS food services manager, Jeffrey Mills, who had spent his first months forcing Chartwells to radically overhaul its menus, ditching Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets and strawberry milk in favor of chicken on the bone, homemade lasagna and locally-sourced broccoli.

Now comes Mills saying deficits have only gotten worse under Chartwells--a whopping $14.35 million in the current school year. But wait: According to figures Mills recently supplied to D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh, budget overruns in food service have ranged widely. In school year 2006-2007, when DCPS was running its own food service--meaning purchasing ready-made meals packed in a suburban factory--the deficit was $10.8 million. The following year, when food service was still self-operated, the flow of red ink increased to $11.6 million. In 2008-2009, after Chartwells took over, the deficit swelled to $14.4 million. But the following year it shrank to $13, million and fell a whopping 30 percent in 2010-2011--the year D.C. hired D.C. Central and Revolution Foods to serve the food in 14 schools as part of a pilot program.

So why is the budget shortfall back with a vegeance this year--40 percent larger, in fact, at $14.35 million?

Out of control deficits have prompted schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to demand that her food service team immediately advertise a new "mega-contract" for outsourced cafeteria operations. A request for proposal is scheduled to be published in this Sunday's Washington Post. The last such RFP was published four years ago and led to the hiring of Chartwells. The only other company to bid was Sodexo, one of Chartwells main competitors.

Both companies are part of huge, foreign-based conglomerates. Sodexo is French, Chartwells, which manages food service in more than 500 U.S. school districts, is just a small part of the $14 billion Compass Group, based in Great Britain.

There's no reason to suspect that Chartwells won't bid on the new contract. Or that it might not just win the bidding again and continue under some new terms. That's the last thing Mills would want to see. He wants Chartwells out now so that he can run his own system in-house. But that has put him at odds with Chancellor Henderson, who won't even listen to Mills' proposal and prefers to rule over DCPS cafeterias in typical D.C. fashion--with an iron fist.

Apparently, one thing Mills hasn't learned in his two years on the job is how to navigate the schools bureaucracy. It will be a miracle if he keeps his job. And that would be a shame, since he really has presided over some dramatic improvements. The vastly more appetizing menu-- minus the flavored milk and other processed junk foods--was a great starter. But he also has incorporated lots of locally-sourced produce, taking advantage of extra funding made available in the Healthy Schools Act approved by the D.C. Council two years ago. He started a school breakfast program that has been named the best in the country, along with a new "supper" program that ensures kids don't go home in the evening with empty stomachs. And he's installed salad bars in a number of schools, which has been credited with increasing student participation in the meals program across the board.

That's why it's so important now to ask the city's inspector general to finally untangle the messy finances in DCPS food services. Please tell us why the schools consistently lose so much money every year feeding our kids. We need this kind of baseline information--some real straight talk--so that we can make important decisions in the future about how school cafeterias should be run.

In my reporting on school food, I've chosen to look on these deficits in D.C. as a subsidy for the meals program. For sure, all that red ink helps pay for some of the best school food in the country. But is it also subsidizing too much waste and inefficiency? Do we just pay a lot more for cafeteria worker salaries? Or is too much money simply lining the pockets of Chartwells and its Compass Group shareholders?

If the schools were running deficits before, when they were just ordering the equivalent of factory-made airline meals, how different are the deficits now, when we have a professional food service company making the meals in school kitchens using individual components? These are the kinds of questions the inspector general could answer so that we as a community do not continue to trip over ourselves trying to decide what kind of food service the schools should have, so that we aren't trying to chose a winner between the chancellor and her food services director.

I'm told that asking the inspector general to get involved now really wouldn't help much--it takes a year or two to conduct an investigation and generate a report. But here's the kicker: building a successful food program in a district the size of D.C. is a multi-year process. In Boulder, for instance, where I spent a week observing the results of a dramatic overhaul, Ann Cooper and her team of experts spent a year just studying the local cafeteria operation and devising a plan to change a menu of processed junk to meals prepared by teams of professional chefs. In Berkeley, parents spent years organizing and agitating before they got their vaunted cafeteria overhaul.

Changing school food service in any meaningful way requires political change as well. Butting heads in the D.C. Council chamber, as May Cheh did with Kaya Henderson yesterday, may provide drama and grist for reporters, but it doesn't result in clarity or the unity of purpose we need to move the school food program together. But one thing the Council could do now that would help is ask for a formal investigation by the inspector general. That at least would explain why school food service budgets don't balance, and give us a common reference point with which to hold a civilized conversation down the road.

D.C. Council Chair Would Have First-Graders Make School Food Policy, Reinstate Chocolate Milk

Just say no to chocolate milk

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

D.C.Council Chairman Kwame Brown says he's in possession of "research" conducted by a first-grade pupil that convinces him schools in the nation's capitol should bring back chocolate milk.

Brown made the remarks in an animated exchange last week with Kaya Henderson during hearings to consider her confirmation as schools chancellor. Saying a sleuthing first-grader had conducted "a study" concluding that kids just won't drink milk unless it's chocolate--information Brown said he confirmed talking to children at two recent elementary school promotion ceremonies--Brown pressed Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk, which school officials removed from the menu a year ago as part of a push to make cafeteria food healthier.

Brown said he was impressed by the nutritional information on flavored milk the first-grader had amassed. More likely, Brown was tagged by the long arm of the dairy industry, which relentlessly pursues efforts to keep flavored milk in schools to offset decades of decline in sales of plain milk. As one of a few major school districts to ditch chocolate milk, the District of Columbia has become a crown jewel for activists aiming to topple flavored milk's rule in the nation's lunch rooms. Brown parroted the dairy industry line that kids won't drink milk unless it's tarted up with sugar, and will collapse in a heap of osteoperosis and rickets without it.

Henderson says dairy lobbyists have been pressuring her as well.

So how does a six-year-old dicatate school food policy in the nation's capitol? Here's the transcript from last Thursday's hearing:

Brown: This is from our youth hearing, a first-grader, and he made sense. And I want him to know to get his question in. We have the Healthy Schools Act. And we all know we want everyone to eat healthy. And I’m all supportive of that. But he had a survey of about I think 100 and something students that he had spoken with and I did my own independent survey of a couple of graduation ceremonies I attended and I come to find out that most students agree. They want to know why they can’t have chocolate milk in the schools. They said they’re getting juices that have more sugar than chocolate milk that has protein and less sugar. And their question to you was to say that it’s not because it’s not part of the Healthy [Schools] Act but because the schools just don’t offer it. And it’s wrong that the schools don’t give them a choice to have chocolate milk anymore. And I want to know can you commit to make sure that we have chocolate milk back in our elementary schools. Because they made an argument that it has protein and calcium and is better than some of the juices they’re getting inside the school now.

Henderson: I got a call from the milk producers of America telling me that research effectively says that if kids don’t drink chocolate milk, they won’t drink milk. I’m happy to work with my food services department on it.

Brown: So we’re going to get chocolate milk back into schools?

Henderson: I will work on it. I mean, here’s the thing, right? We didn’t make that decision lightly. There was a reason.

Brown: I know. I’m not saying….

Henderson: I’m willing to reopen the conversation about chocolate milk.

Brown: We reopened it already. You called and you talked to the milk people and….

Henderson: The milk people called me. That’s the lobbying people [laughs].

Brown: The first-grader came and he did the study and it said that most kids aren’t drinking milk at all now. They’re drinking more juices with more sugar and they’re more inclined at a young age to drink chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’ll talk to my people. Our priority is to have our kids drinking milk.

Brown: Chocolate milk?

Henderson: Why do you all try to get me to get up here and….

Brown: This is an interview, right? We asked you a question and we want to know what you’re committing to.

Henderson: Until I talk to my food service experts, I can’t make that commitment.

Brown: Is anyone here from….

Henderson: No, food services is not here.

Brown: Chocolate milk. Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate. We want our youth to know when they come to testify, they sit all day long, and he put an incredible amount of work into some of this research and I went to two elementary schools and spoke at their promotional exercises— graduations—and I asked them about chocolate milk and, yes, they want chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’m on it Mr. Chairman.

Brown. Thank you.

Brown's remarks came as members of the school board in Los Angeles--the nation's second-largest school district--were voting to eliminate chocolate, strawberry and other flavored milk as part of that city's battle against childhood obesity. Schools in Berkeley, Boulder, Minneapolis and elsewhere also have sworn off flavored milk because of the added sugar it contains. D.C. school officials made the move with little fanfare nearly a year ago after appointing a new food services director who has aggressively redesigned the menu, removing many of the processed and sugary items that had been served daily to the district's 45,000 students. Nearby Fairfax County, Va., also removed chocolate milk, but then reinstated it to quell protests.

Elected last November as chairman of the D.C. Council, the city's law-making body, Brown created controversy when it was revealed that he had leased not one but two fully-loaded Lincoln Navigators at a cost to the District of nearly $2,000 a month. He had returned the first car because he didn't like the color of the interior--he wanted black-on-black.

A report by the Institute of Medicine last year found that most Americans do not lack calcium or Vitamin D, refuting claims by the dairy industry that children suffer from a "calcium crisis." School food guru Ann Cooper, who refers to flavored milk as "soda in drag," has recently said, "we don't have a calcium crisis, we have an obesity crisis." In fact, kids in D.C. rank eighth in the nation for being overweight or obese.

The average eight-ounce carton of chocolate milk contains 14 grams--or 3.5 teaspoons--of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The American Heart Association has warned that children on average now consume an astonishing 21 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, and as a result exhibit common markers for heart disease, such as low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides and high LDL cholesterol. Robert Ludwig, an expert in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar "poison" because of its link to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease risk. Ludwig cites a worldwide epidemc of obese infants and fatty liver disorder in children.

No less an authority than Walter Willet, head of the nutrition department at Harvard University, has warned that children should not be served flavored milk in school and that milk itself "is not an essential nutrient."

As for sugar in fruit juices, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times last week also wondered why chocolate milk has been getting all the attention, when fruit juice contains as much sugar. The sugar in juice occurs naturally. Still, proposed USDA guidelines [PDF] for school meals would sharply curtial schools' ability to substitute juice for whole fruit.

Milk is not categorized as a protein in the federally-subsidized school meals program. Because of the dairy industry's special relationship with the USDA, milk comprises its own food group and must be offered with all meals. Protein in school meals comes from other designated sources, such as meat, poultry and fish. Most schools elect to offer milk as an optional meal selection, but D.C. Public Schools officials, in an effort to speed up food lines, this year required all elementary school students to take milk with their meals. The schools have not released data indicating how much milk children are drinking.

The dairy industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting chocolate milk while trying to scare parents, politicians and food service directors into believing that children won't grow healthy bones if they do not have access to milk with added sugar and flavorings. The slick industry campaign, including a "Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!" promotion, pays for "studies" that bolster the industry cause, then dresses them up with statements cherry-picked from various health and medical groups to create an impression of widespread approval for kids drinking sugary milk products as much as they like.

Dairy interests have vigorously promoted one "study" in particular purporting to show that milk consumption plummets when flavored milk is removed from school. But that was the product of a marketing research firm hired by by the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which refuses to make the "study" available for public inspection.

For the last year and a half, I've been monitoring what kids in the nation's capitol eat in the cafeteria every day and I can attest that they still drink plain milk. Sure, they'd drink more if it were chocolate or strawberry. But we already know kids love sugar. They'd eat lollipops instead of lunch if we let them--and some do. Only a year ago, they were pouring strawberry milk over Apple Jacks cereal as part of a breakfast that included Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. Kids as young as five were regularly being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started. All that is gone in favor of plain milk, cereal containing no more than five grams of sugar, string cheese and yogurt.

Still, just in the last week I saw children at my daughter's elementary school unpacking bottles of Sprite and Pepsi and containers of Kool Aide from lunch boxes they brought from home. I've seen kids eat bags of home-brought Oreo cookies, giant cupcakes, huge Hershey's chocolate bars and packages of Skittles. I recently witnessed one high-schooler make a lunch out of a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of Lifesaver candies.

Conducting my own unscientific survey for this article, I asked my 11-year-old daughter for her opinion. She said all schools should be made of chocolate and jelly beans, security guards should be replaced with giant Gummi Bears, and classes should be held at the Dave & Buster's arcade at the White Flint Mall. Her nine-year-old cousin, meanwhile, said half of all school hoursshould be spent in recess, the other half at lunch.

Schools are not free choice zones. Last we checked, adults--not children--were still responsible for making important policy decisions involving curricula, teacher hiring, standards and a host of other vital school issues--including nutrition and meal service. Local elected leaders are expected to act like grownups and look out for the welfare of minors, not pander to six-year-olds and the dairy lobby.

You can watch video of the Council hearing here. Fast-forward to 2:23.30 to view the discussion concerning chocolate milk in schools.

D.C. to Pay for "Healthy Schools" with Sales Tax on Sodas

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The D.C. Council yesterday agreed to fully fund the recently approved "Healthy Schools" initiative, but not with the "soda tax" proposed by Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3). Rather, the city will begin imposing a more traditional sales tax of six percent on all soft drinks sold in the District.

What, you might be asking, is the difference between these two approaches to taxing sodas?

The beverage industry vigorously campaigned against the 1-cent excise tax on sodas because it would have raised the shelf price that consumers see when they purchase soft drinks. The sales tax of six percent, by contrast, appears only on the sales receipt after beverages have been purchased.

Although the industry also opposed the sales tax, it brings the District in line with neighboring Maryland, which already taxes soft drinks at six percent. Virginia levies a much lower 2.5 percent sales tax.

D.C. council members were more comfortable with the traditional sales tax approach because it is already familiar, in contrast to the more progressive excise tax, which was aimed not only at raising money to improve food served in the District's public schools, but also was seen as a weapon to combat obesity by making sugary sodas more expensive.

The penny-per-ounce excise tax would have only applied to sugar-sweetened beverages. Diet drinks, calorie-free drinks, juices (with at least 70% juice), milk, coffee, and tea would have been excluded. The six percent sales tax applies also to artificially sweetened beverages, including diet and zero-calorie drinks, sports drinks and energy drinks. It will not apply to beverages containing milk, coffee, juice or tea.

The one-cent excise tax also had a cap of 30 cents per container.

The six percent sales tax is projected to raise more revenue--$7.92 million annually--than the penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages--$6.3 million. Costs associated with the "Healthy Schools" initiative are expected to run about $6.5 million per year.

But the "soda tax" may not be dead. An aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who authored the "Healthy Schools" legislation, said last night she will continue to press for the one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages sold in the city. "Because the obesity epidemic is such a enormous health crisis in the District (73% and 72% of residents in Ward 7 and 8 are overweight or obese!), Councilmember Cheh plans to continue to push for a penny-per-ounce excise tax because it is a good health policy."

Stay tuned.