Feeding Children is Not Our Core Competency!

The position at the very top of D.C. Public Schools--interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson--continues to be that schools are incapable of running their own food service program. Henderson says she is glad to have a hired third party--Chartwells--handle it so she can focus on reading and math.

Henderson made her views on school food known in a meeting with a small group of activists--including myself--along with the director of food services, Jeffrey Mills, and Peggy O'Brien, head of "community engagement."

Henderson embraces the status quo as introduced three years ago by her predecessor, Michelle Rhee, who hired Chartwells in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of dollars from the food services operation, which was losing between $11 million and $14 million each year, according to school officials.

By comparison, the entire food delivery contract with Chartwells amounts to around $28 million annually. It includes $7 million worth of deficit spending.

But as school officials are learning, the "cost reimbursable" arrangement with Chartwells, in which D.C. Public Schools pays all of the expenses Chartwells incurs, is far more expensive than simply paying a contractor such as D.C. Central Kitchen or Revolution Foods to provide meals a flat rate, which they are doing in 14 schools as part of two pilot projects.

Think what D.C. schools might save if they learned to make the food themselves, as other successful school districts do. In fact, most of the nation's school districts--including the largest, New York City, and surrounding suburban jurisdictions here, such as Montgomery and Fairfax County--manage their own, in-house food service operations.

At the moment, Mills and others are locked in closed-door discussions about how DCPS will feed its 45,000 students next year. Unfortunately, they are doing so without any input from the community, an attitude that activists such as myself, along with Andrea Northup of the D.C. Farm to School Network, and Tara Flakker of Parents for Better D.C. School Food, would like to see changed.

In school districts where creating a successful food program is a priority, community involved has been key to success. That was certainly the case in Berkeley, Calif., and in Boulder, Co., two districts where I have spent considerable time in the kitchens and the cafeterias, and where parents rallied around the idea that children deserve better than processed convenience foods and tons of sugar for breakfast and lunch.

Here in D.C., many positive changes have been made to the menu in the last year, but precious little has been done in the way of involving parents or the community in those changes, or in educating children about why they should be eating something other than their beloved chicken nuggets and tater tots.

The education element will only become more critical as the USDA implements meal guidelines that restrict foods kids like most--such as potatoes--and require lots more "healthy" foods kids typically trash: green, orange and red vegetables, and whole grains. School kitchens will be further challenged by a requirement to reduce the salt in food by at least half. Kids already complain their food doesn't have enough flavor. The USDA anticipates that removing salt will mean schools ditching processed foods such as nuggets and cooking lots more from scratch.

Henderson and too many of her underlings seem to have not yet grasped this reality and the importance of involving parents and community leaders in each step of the process. In our meeting, the interim chancellor seemed astonished to learn, for instance, that a parent--me--was visiting his daughter's cafeteria every day, photographing the food and talking to children about it.

"Wouldn't that be like having a parent sitting in the classroom?" Henderson asked. In other words, how can children possibly focus on eating if there is a parent present?

But if only cafeterias were treated like classrooms, where the food they were eating were part of an important lesson, rather than a chaotic rush to find something appealing among all the USDA-required items on their trays, gobble it up in the 15 minutes they have remaining after they've stood in the meal line--only to toss the rest in the trash.

In some districts, such as Boulder, parents are actually encouraged to visit the cafeteria and help introduce new foods and coach kids in healthier eating. They know that leaving kids to their own devices is not a formula for success. Healthy eating habits need to be taught, just like reading and math. Parents, who are responsible for feeding their children from birth, after all, are very much part of that equation.

Solving this riddle--or at least shedding some light on it--is the purpose of the Better D.C. School Food blog. But the fact that the schools chancellor isn't even aware that this ongoing project exists--one year later--speaks volumes about the miles we have to go to turn things around here in the nation's captiol, right outside Michelle Obama's door.

The Trouble with Local Produce

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I wonder if anyone else attending the "food services roundtable" this week at D.C. Public Schools headquarters was struck by food services director Jeffrey Mills' comment that he and his crew have recently taste-tested some 300 different "food products" for the upcoming school year.

Mills said he personally had tasted "30 different chicken products," in the effort to improve school meals.

"Food products"? "Chicken products"?

The emphasis seems to be on "products" rather than fresh food. And that's one of the problems schools face when their idea of serving children revolves around hiring a giant food services contractor--in this case Chartwells--whose method of producing meals involves reheating industrially processed convenience foods. Or should we say "products"?

D.C. schools under Chancellor Michelle Rhee have determined that cooking is not a "core competency" of schools and so have farmed out the job to Chartwells. This year they are introducing two pilot programs--14 schools to be served meals either from Revolution Foods or D.C. Central Kitchen--to create a little competition and light a fire under Chartwells.

Still, the problem remains: how do you get fresh produce into the meals if no one in the kitchen is trained to handle it, or doesn't have the equipment?

As well as being pressed by healthy food and farm to school advocates, Mills has a financial incentive to put some sort of locally grown food on every cafeteria tray. The "Healthy Schools Act"passed earlier this year by the D.C. Council offers a five-cent bonus for each school meal that contains a locally grown component.

That wouldn't be hard at all if D.C. schools had salad bars. But D.C. schools don't have salad bars. They could put it in the soup. But D.C. schools don't make or serve soup. They could put local vegetables in the the pasta sauce. But D.C. schools don't make their own pasta sauce. It comes out of a can. Does that mean replacing cooked-to-death broccoli from Mexico or California with local cooked-to-death broccoli?

Mills remarked that "there's a ton of local produce around us" here in the District of Columbia. He said one local distributor, Keany Produce, has assured him it can deliver all the local produce D.C. schools might require. But as far as actually using that produce in school kitchens: "Hopefully as years go on, we can improve the skills of our kitchen workers and upgrade our kitchens."

Years? Is there a plan we don't know about?

Anthony Tata, chief operating officer for the schools, seems perfectly content to rely on vendors. When asked whether D.C. schools might ever emulate other schools districts who "self operate" their food service and cook with raw products, he said it's all about "good contract management." "I can't predict the future," Tata said, "but we will make decisions to bring the most nutritious food to our kids. We think we've found the sweet spot of what we're driving toward. We'll be ruthless in holding [vendors] accountable."

Meanwhile, other school districts around the country are doing everything they can to train their own cooks and upgrade their kitchens in order to prepare meals more economically from scratch using fresh produce and other raw ingredients. Here's a report that aired last night on PBS Newshour, describing how schools in Colorado are using federal stimulus funds to conduct "culinary boot camps" to train their own cooks.

A Shared Vision for DCPS Food Services

By Jody Tick

There has been a lot of buzz and excitement about the new leadership and direction of the DCPS food services. The conversation continued yesterday at a DCPS Community Forum, where about 60 parents, teachers, food service professionals, and community organizations gathered to ask questions of DCPS Food Services Director Jeff Mills, Chief Operations Officer Tony Tata, and Director of Health & Wellness Diana Bruce.

As an active DCPS parent, and a program director at the Capital Area Food Bank, I recognized almost every face in the room - fellow parent activist Constance Newman, garden educator Kacie Warner, and anti-hunger advocate Kristin Roberts, to name a few. Each of those wonderful stakeholders could be so much more than just a face in the crowd. We could be valuable assets to the DCPS school meal system, and advocates in support of the changes you plan to make.

Since coming in to town a few months ago, the DCPS food services team has undertaken incredible efforts to transform D.C. school meals. This has been a challenge, given that D.C. school meals have a rocky history plagued by contract mismanagement, financial accountability issues, food safety concerns, and inconsistent leadership. Jeff Mills and his team have inherited a 60,000 meal-a-day beast of a system, and have been quick to make big promises about how they’re going to turn it around on a dime. To their credit, they’ve made huge expansions to breakfast in the classroom, piloting supper programs at after-school programs, taking on two new vendors as pilot projects, and hiring new staff. And there are big promises of things to come, such as a garden-kitchen educational program, special celebratory events, a totally new menu based on unprocessed, fresh foods, 20% local produce, and compliance with Institute of Medicine standards. The list goes on.

But who’s calling the shots? What is the end goal? Where are we headed?

All the people in that room last night are on the same side as Jeff and his team. We want the great things for our kids and our community that they rattled off - more fresh, unprocessed foods, more local produce, better access to school meals. But we understand that it won’t be easy to get those foods on D.C. cafeteria trays, and then get kids to eat them. You’ll need the community to be your allies in this. But a few things need to change.

First, you must engage us. We need a formal system for providing input and giving feedback. It is not enough for you to stand in front of us and tell us what’s happening. We need to have a formal “Advisory Committee” comprised of a wide swath of community members and national experts to be a part of the planning and execution of the new DCPS school meal operation. We need this NOW, as plans for the future are being shaped and defined, not after they have already been developed.

Second, slow down. Nobody is expecting a barrage of reforms that will solve every aspect of the DCPS school meals all at once. The issues plaguing the DCPS school food system run deep, and have been decades in the making (as you probably know better than we do). We would rather see a few simple, measurable goals achieved than dozens of efforts pulled together quickly.

Third, show us a strategic plan. This city has seen too many well-intentioned but piecemeal efforts to improve the health and well-being of our youth. We need to be thinking not months, but years into the future at what DCPS food services will look like. Tony Tata himself said that DCPS has no idea what this operation will look like after this year, and that’s unacceptable. Other large, urban school districts have overcome the same issues we are facing and are serving the types of meals we strive to serve. Let us learn from their successes and failures, and develop a strategic plan to get where we all want to go, with attention to the unique strengths and weaknesses we have here in the nation’s capital.

Fourth, be transparent. Keep us in the loop with your plans, the criteria you use to evaluate foods, how you spend our taxpayer dollars, where your food is coming from and what’s down the pipeline. It’s not enough for you to give us vague responses to our questions from time to time - stay ahead of the curve and provide us with concrete information.

You can have our 100% support in these efforts if you engage us, and make calculated, strategic change towards our common goals, and are transparent with the community you’re serving. And believe me, it is going to take our support and buy-in on a much deeper level to realize the ambitious goals that we all have for D.C. school food. We owe it to the thousands of children who depend on these meals each day to work together on this while we have the chance. Let’s get it right.

Jody Tick is a member of Parents for Better D.C. School Food.

You Call This Food?

By Ed Bruske

I was ready to have a perfectly civilized discussion--blog-to-blog--with Sam Fromartz over at ChewsWise on the subject of what we can do to get kids to eat better when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the lunch being served at my daughter's elementary school here in the nation's capital. Look at the photo above and tell me what you see. Do you see the same thing I do? French fries, a bag of Sun Chips, and an 8-ounce carton of strawberry-flavored milk.

You almost have to rub your eyes and take a second look. Can this really be true? Hello, Jamie Oliver! Not all the bad school food is in Huntington, W.Va. We've got the same stuff right here in Washington, D.C., barely a mile from the White House.

To my knowledge, Michelle Obama has never addressed the glycemic bomb being served daily to public school children right outside her door. But I could be wrong. Yes, just a mile or so from the White House, where we're told over and over the Obamas are hard on the case, solving the nation's childhood obesity epidemic, kids in elementary school are being served chips, fries and strawberry milk for lunch.

Oh, wait. I forgot the ketchup. Two foil packets of it. That should count for something. And as far as chips go, Sun Chips--made from corn, whole wheat, rice flour, whole oat flour--are probably the lesser of many evils. Still....

I actually found it heartrending to watch my daughter's lunch group--10- and 11-year-olds--waiting patiently for their midday meal, first at their tables, then pressed against a wall in a queue near the door to the food line, only to emerge at the other end with this on their Styrofoam trays. Some also had a mealy-looking chili with beans. Some had a fresh pear. But under federal "offered-versus-served" rules, kids only need to take three of the offered items to qualify for a federally-subsidized meal. That's how you get fries, chips and strawberry-flavored milk. (Fries count as a vegetable, and the milk protein, the chips grain. Get it?)

Yes, we can have a conversation about how to get kids to eat healthier foods. But first, we need to ask, Where are the adults in this picture? Children have not yet reached the age of consent. Grownups are supposed to take care of them. Yet when you enter a public school cafeteria, you step into a kind of culinary gulag where for years the adults grinding away anonymously inside have done their best to keep the truth of what they are doing hidden from the public at large. And the public at large has been just as happy not knowing the details. This was a matter we conveniently left in the hands of "professionals"--food service workers, nutritionists, government regulators, food industry lobbyists--who have spent the last several decades devising ways to make "food" for children that grownups don't have to pay for.

Now, with Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" being aired on network television, and school meals showing up in vivid color in the blogosphere, we are finally getting a glimmer of what "school lunch" really means. It's not a joke any more. What we feed children has consequences. And the pictures are ugly.

Yet it is obvious that children--and especially what they eat--are not a priority. We would much rather spend billions fighting foreign wars, building tanks, dropping bombs. Honestly, what we get from most politicians is lip service and a nickel tossed into the collection plate. We are on the brink of losing our collective memory of what constitutes real food. Yet no one is accountable. We are not to judge the "lunch ladies" too harshly. They are doing the best they can. We are not to judge the food service directors too harshly. They also are doing the best they can. We should not judge our local government leaders too harshly. They depend on federal dollars. We should not judge parents too harshly. They are busy working to make ends meat....

Would anyone like to step forward and take responsibility for feeding our children in school?

The final indignity came when I was abruptly stopped from taking further photographs in the lunch room by the school's assistant principal. She whisked me off to a conference room where the principal was having lunch with teachers (what would happen if the adults at school had to eat the same food as the kids?) The principal told me she had been admonished for the series of articles I wrote from the school's kitchen back in January, a glimpse behind the curtain that revealed the "fresh cooked" scheme the school system had recently implemented in collaboration with its contracted food service provider, Chartwells-Thompson, was nothing of the sort. To continue taking photographs of the food, the principal said, I would need clearance from higher up. "I don't want to get in trouble again," she said.

Turns out there was an aftermath to my expose of the D.C. school kitchen. The young kitchen manager I profiled, who liked so much to add shredded cheese to boost the flavor of all those industrially-processed dishes she was heating in the steamer, has disappeared, presumably re-assigned.

I'm trying to square this with what Anthony Tata, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee's chief operating officer, told The Washington Post about me and that series of articles on Feb. 12: "I think it's great a parent is super-involved and we are soliciting his input as we go forward with our program changes," Tata said.

Blah, blah, blah.

I accuse the adults responsible for school food of gross indifference. I accuse all of us of failing to step up to the plate. I challenge Chancellor Rhee and Anthony Tata to have a real conversation with parents about the food children are eating in school. But let us not fail because we refused to look at the problem square in the eye.

Ed Bruske writes The Slow Cook blog.