Schools go above & beyond despite limited funds

By Amanda Smith
With today’s busy schedules, parents are inclined to buy cheap, easy, on-the-go meals especially from fast food chains. “One of the obstacles is that students eat convenience food at home and when they come in, they don’t want the healthy stuff,” said School Lunch Manager at Plattsburgh City School District, Charlene O’Conner.
In Clinton County alone, nearly 35 percent of people are obese. Obesity has the potential to start a young age when parents interpret their infants’ crying as a need to be fed, said SUNY Plattsburgh Nutrition Professor, Susannah LeVon. “I don’t think there’s enough education (available,)” she said.
“I would like to spend more time on (nutrition education),” said Plattsburgh School District’s Momot Elementary Principal, Mary Louise Lamberti. The district sends out a health newsletter to all households with children attending the school. They also have dieticians from the Clinton County Health Department come and speak with students in an assembly or a classroom setting about the importance of nutrition, said Nutritional Coordinator for the Clinton County Department of Health, Jeri Reid.
Schools have a responsibility to teach kids about nutrition and parents have the responsibility to enforce it, said Managing Dietician of College Auxiliary Services of SUNY Plattsburgh, Vallee said. Helping parents learn about letting kids regulate their own eating is also important. Parents may not realize that they are setting a bad example simply by eating at a fast food restaurant. “Kids do what parents do, not what they say,” she said. “If you make it a war, it will be.”
LeVon hopes to one day have a community cooking class to teach Plattsburgh locals how to cook healthy, economical meals from scratch. Knowing how to make a nutritious meal is also a problem for many families. Time and money all factor into why we eat unhealthily, LeVon said. Although they are under close surveillance, schools have the same issues as parents with time and money.
Plattsburgh School District is one of the eight districts in Clinton County that follow the USDA’s guidelines. They have recently adopted a slue of new rules and guidelines to provide their students with more nutritious meals. A limited choice of commodities from the USDA and lack of funds force school districts like Plattsburgh to provide frozen food that needs to be heated up. Commodities consist of mostly dairy and meat products, usually high in fat, used for schools at lower costs. With fruits and vegetables, the cost of labor is what increases the total cost, said LeVon. Though, schools are free to go beyond the state criteria, Vallee said.
“To continue these great strides and to protect children’s health, we urge the USDA to move quickly to develop and propose regulations to apply the new Dietary Guidelines to the school meal programs in a cost-effective manner,” said The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity, which is made up of various health-related associations such as the American Heart Association and Yale Prevention Center.
It is possible to make a healthy meal that can be cheaper than processed food and take less time, LeVon said.
The schools have been making their own choices about what foods to sell and what policies will work for them. “(The policy) is kept around the building so if someone wants a copy (they can have it,)” O’Conner said. Everything must be in accordance with the nutrition guidelines from the USDA, state, and local law. Plattsburgh School District has adopted many new rules this year in its policy which is updated yearly. Specific rules are implicated for foods sold throughout the day, especially foods sold at fundraising events, food as a means of reward, and even celebration food is restricted. School parties are allowed “no more than one food or beverage that does not meet nutritional standards,” according to the schools policy.
A few schools in the county, like Plattsburgh, have made the choice of switching to whole-grain wheat products and fresh fruits. The students are more likely to buy fresh-cut sliced apples rather than whole apples which is why the school has started to make more of those available, said O’Conner. Plattsburgh School District has even tried serving healthier options such as soup, but “students strain the veggies out,” she said.
The more food the school serves, the more money they receive from the government so the school tries to give students a variety to choose from. To maintain control, the school has chosen to restrict the sale of certain items. The state has banned the sale of soda in vending machines for elementary and middle school students to deter them from making bad choices. Instead, vending machines have been stocked with water and juice to promote healthy eating.
Having a computerized registration system from a company called LunchByte Systems has helped Plattsburgh District to keep track of what students buy. “Parents will call and put notes (on the system),” O’Conner said. The system is a way of controlling students’ intake or at least monitoring what the parents cannot.
As of last year, schools are required to keep tabs on students by reporting body mass index every two years to the Health Department, Reid said.
“The ideal situation would be if everyone could eat for free, have fresh vegetables and home-cooked meals from scratch…It would be great if everyone sat down and ate instead of throw it out,” O’Conner said.
A few school districts within the county participate in the nation-wide Farm to School Program which supplies fresh food to local schools grown on local farms. Of all the schools in New York, only seventeen are involved in the program.
“With the supply problem, it hasn't really taken off,” Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Agricultural Team Leader, Amy Ivy said via e-mail. However, Plattsburgh School Disrtict, does buy fresh fruits and vegetables directly from locals farms such as Rulf’s, Pray’s, and Shield’s.
In Florida, they offer less starchy items and cut out fried foods, said Vallee, who interned under nationally-recognized Director of Nutrition for Sarasota County Public School, Beverly Girard. “Parents do the best they can…(but) child nutrition seems to do better in schools,” Girard said. “We are about ten years behind in school funding compared to the consumer price index,” she said. “There is no ideal under government funded programs.”