56 Workingmother.com| AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019
home front| SAVE OUR SCHOOL LUNCHES
—ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION72 %
kids in Chicago’s public school system (and beyond)
have access to healthy, nutritional food. “We are
concerned that schools will choose to serve meals to
the lesser standard because it’s easier, even though
it’s not what is best for the students.”
The quality of our school lunches matters for
many reasons. For starters, healthy eating habits
developed early in life are more likely to continue
into adulthood (thus reducing adult obesity and
diabetes). There have also been countless studies
that link nutrition to learning. “A lot of work has
been done to show that kids who eat a healthy
breakfast can focus better, do better in school, are
more alert, and more awake,” says Kirsten Tobey,
co-founder and Chief Impact Offi cer at Revolution
Foods, a food-service company that dishes out
2 million healthy, chef-crafted meals per week to
schools and community programs in 15 states.
We’re not just talking about lunches either. More
than 90,000 schools and institutions also serve
breakfasts to 14.7 million students each day. A
majority of these breakfasts and lunches—plus snacks
and after-school meals—are provided for free or at a
reduced cost for kids coming from low-income
households, which increases cause for concern.
“These kids are heavily reliant on school meals
for their nutrient intake for the day,” Tobey points
out. “When you downgrade the nutritional quality
of all of those meals for the day, it’s going to have a
huge impact on kids. That’s where we see thedisproportionate impact on low-income
communities.” So poorer kids get less-healthy food,
don’t perform as well in school, and unfortunately,
the cycle continues. Of course, the quality of a
school’s meals can vary, but generally, students in
more-affl uent areas have healthier options.
Whether that describes your neighborhood,
chances are you’re unhappy with what’s being served
up. And you’re not alone: During the Obama era, the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health-focused
philanthropy, found that 72 percent of parents sur-
veyed favor national standards for meals and snacks.
More and more parents are voicing their concerns,
and groups such as the Chef Ann Foundation (which
helps schools create healthier menus) received
almost $100,000 in civilian donations in 2018. While
you can take on a big-but-totally-doable goal to help
your school get a grant to, say, install a salad bar,
there are also smaller, less-time-consuming things
you can do. We spoke to real ( busy!) working moms
who’ve made a diff erence at their kids’ schools to get
some tips and pointers for easy, impactful things
you can do to change the food on off er in your local
school cafeterias.of parents favor
national standards
for meals and snacks1
Find out who’s in charge.
There’s a lot of bureaucratic red tape
wrapped around school lunch programs.
Menus and food purchasing usually happen
at the district level, which means your
principal is probably not the decision-maker
and has no authority over the food program.
The fi rst step: Learn who is controlling what’s
being served in your school. Usually this is the
district’s school nutrition director, says Bettina
Elias Siegel, founder of the Lunch Tray, a blog
about children and food-policy news and
commentary. Once you have a name, “you
should be able to fi nd his or her contact info
on your district’s website,” she advises.2
Come up with a specific
goal. Saying you want to improve the
school cafeteria menu is a good start.
You’ll be more successful, though, if you prioritize
your objectives, make clear requests, and then
work step by step to get there. “You can’t expect
your district to overhaul its entire meal program
overnight. But you could, for example, aim to
install salad bars in a certain percentage of the
district’s elementary schools by a certain date,
and then fi gure out how to fi nd that extra
funding,” says Siegel, who has successfully
petitioned to get pink slime (a ground-beef fi ller)
out of school lunches, and more. Maybe you
want a new vegetable added, or whole wheat
swapped in for white bread. Have a list of what
the most important wins would look like.IS
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