By Karen Allen
Nancy Huehnergarth: Starting Small and Getting
Big Results in Chappaqua, NY
In her crusade for better school nutrition, Nancy Huehnergarth learned early on that you can't go into a school district that is selling Cheetos, candy-coated ice cream and Yoo-Hoo and tell them you want to install an organic salad bar. You have to go in baby steps.
Huehnergarth took those first steps four years ago when she moved with her family from New York City to Chappaqua and her two daughters entered a new school. She quickly became dismayed that the healthy eating habits her daughters were learning at home were being undermined at their new suburban New York school.
They saw all this junk food, says Huehnergarth. They began to crave more and more of it.
She was especially surprised that vending machines in the middle school her oldest would eventually attend were stocked with sweets, sodas, and chips.
You name a junk food, it was in there, says Huehnergarth, whose daughters are now in fifth and seventh grades.
Huehnergarth, a freelance writer, decided to turn her disappointment into action. She wrote a paper arguing that vending machines in the middle school should have more nutritious snacks and sent it to a PTA chair. She learned that other parents shared her concern and that a PTA nutrition committee was being formed.
The parent committee decided to take on one narrow task at a time. They started with the middle school vending machines, working with the food service contractor to stock them from a list of acceptable drinks and snacks such as milk, seltzer, bottled water, and 100 percent juice; or whole-grain bars, yogurt and baked chips.
At the middle school, the candy-coated ice cream disappeared. We were able to change a lot of the drinks, says Huehnergarth, now the PTA nutrition coordinator for the districts six schools.
Progress in the cafeteria has been slower because it requires school board action. But this summer the board approved guidelines for what can be served in the cafeterias at the districts six schools. The cafeteria may no longer serve soda, sports drinks, or caffeinated drinks, for example, and snacks must be low in sugar and fat.
The parents also hope to help set policy especially in light of the (new school wellness law) on food all over the district: standards for food in the cafeteria; food given at parties; food given out as rewards in classroom. Huehnergarth is now also a member of a state assembly members Nutrition Task Force and the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food.
The parent nutrition committee discovered that many Westchester County school districts have a parent group working on the issue, says Huehnergarth. These groups formed into a coalition and are planning a countywide school-lunch conference to inform school officials and share best practices.
It could be the climate now is receptive to change, she said. This is a fantastic school district. We have an amazing academic program. I just knew that we could bring our nutritional standards up to the standards in other areas.
Lynn Grossman: Supporting a Montana School
Principal with a Vision
Parents in Whitefish, Montana, didn't need much persuasion from an ambitious middle school principal who wanted to change his students eating habits. They were ready and willing to help him take the effort as far as it would go.
Principal Kim Anderson led the charge and everybody just picked up the pace, said Lynn Grossman, who was president of the PTA at the time and is now a board member.
The nutritional enlightenment of this small 2,100-student school district first took hold in 2001 with Anderson's widely publicized campaign to make meals at the middle school healthier and more appealing. Anderson also wanted to eliminate junk food and candy from school grounds, and re-think the custom of serving lunch immediately before recess.
Such an undertaking needs parent allies, and Anderson said he found them in Grossman and others on the Whitefish PTA, which encompasses all three schools in the district. When he asked that a portion of the $15,000 raised through fundraising for the school district be used for more nutritious food instead of additional playground equipment, the PTA was happy to comply.
With Grossman as an advocate and point-parent, the PTA bought items vital to Andersons efforts at the middle school, including a refrigerated vending machine to hold healthy snacks and an organic salad bar for the cafeteria. At the elementary school, the PTA began paying for treasure-box items like pencils and small toys to give away as incentives instead of candy.
Grossman, who is in a second career as a group fitness instructor and personal trainer, says the Whitefish community, a recreation mecca near Glacier National Park, is extremely health-conscious and aware of the growing problem of childhood obesity.
Grossman knows first-hand how childrens behavior can reflect what they eat. She taught school in Alaska for 21 years and has two children, Seth in 11th grade and Mackenzie in 6th. You could tell what kids didn't have breakfast, she said, remembering the lethargy of some students. Then you could usually tell who had a plethora of junk food and sugar, especially in the afternoon.
These days at lunch, the 700 fifth through eighth graders in the middle school can get bagels and salads, submarine sandwiches, baked chips and fresh fruit. Soft drinks, candy and fried chips were eliminated from machines and cafeteria lines.
The school switched recess to before lunch a simple, but apparently radical move and has since noticed that students come to the lunch tables hungrier and eat more of the cafeteria meal.
Although her term as PTA president is over, Grossmans interest in healthy eating remains. She is now focusing her attention on what the PTA sells at the concession stands of high school games, noticing that adults leave the stands for nearby restaurants in search of healthier food.
We're providing healthy alternatives like fruit and pretzels, and not just hot dogs, she said. The PTA offered such food at a recent game and made $1,000.
Victoria Berends: Setting the Stage for a
New Law Banning Junk Food in California
Schools
Victoria Berends refused to feel more than cautiously optimistic when the California Assembly passed legislation in September banning the sale of junk food and soda on all K-12 school campuses. We don't have time to celebrate, said the California mom who has advocated for several years for more nutritious school food. Now the real work is going to be done.
Berends, the mother of two girls, a one-year-old and 2nd grader, speaks from experience. She began advocating for less junk food and soda in her childrens Sacramento County school district before her oldest child entered kindergarten.
Berends also has a longtime interest and training in kids health issues she is marketing director for California Project LEAN, a group that promotes healthy eating and physical activity in schools. It seemed natural to give some of this passion back to her own community, on her own time.
She helped mobilize parents and community leaders of the 19,000-student Folsom Cordova Unified School District a few years ago to speak out at a school board meeting, bringing the school boards attention to how much junk food, soda and candy were available on school grounds during the school day. She believes such work from her and other parents helped set the stage for the new law banning junk food and sodas.
Initially, resistance came from those who worried that soda machines and snack bars raise money for student government, proms, clubs and athletic programs. The high schools had long-term exclusive contracts with soda companies, which in return donated a percentage of the sales to school programs and activities.
As a result of the attention parents like Berends brought to the issue, an exclusive soda contract wasn't signed when the district opened a new high school recently and other soda contracts that expired were not renewed.
The school board has also sought to make sure at least half the food in the snack bars were healthy choices, an effort still in progress. Berends has visited some of the snack bars recently and notices plenty of candy and chips. There might be one bag of pretzels behind all that stuff, and maybe a bag of nuts, she said.
For this reason, Berends believes local school districts like hers will need to be vigilant about making sure the new law gets implemented. And while she applauds the legislation, she also thinks it could go further. For example, the law bans soda, but still allows sport drinks, she says. Personally, I think [the law] is a guideline. But we can go beyond it.
Karen Tanner Allen is a Washington, D.C.-based writer whose articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington Parent and Working Woman magazines.