Blog
Oct
National School Lunch week shines the spotlight on the programs and nutritious food that’s served up every day all year long at schools across the country.
“We have the opportunity in the state of Alabama to reach approximately three quarters of a million children on a daily basis for meals,” said June Barrett, Alabama Child Nutrition Program Coordinator for the state Department of Education. Nationally, the School Lunch Program serves nearly 30 million students every school day.
“If a child is hungry, they cannot learn. And I think that that’s probably the biggest message that we need to provide to parents and to the community in general,” Barrett explains about the importance of the School Lunch Program. “Because if a child did not come to school, having eaten breakfast, did not have an opportunity to eat lunch, then they would not be able to sit in the chairs and learn from the teachers or listen to what the teachers are trying to present to them.”
The coronavirus pandemic has added some major challenges to the mission of making sure every child is fed.
“Some of the challenges our local Child Nutrition directors face were actually making contact with the children once the schools were released in March,” Barrett said. “We did provide meals, we had curbside pickup. We thought out of the box as much as you could possibly think out of the box and provide meals to children. And it’s been very, very valuable. We’ve partnered also with our Department of Transportation, and meals were actually delivered by bus drivers through certain communities. We’ve had all sorts of opportunities to encourage children to dine with us. We have the fresh fruits and vegetable program and USDA allowed us to extend that to the to the children who were at home learning during virtual learning processes. So we’ve really tried as diligently and served as many children as we could serve meals and food while they were away from the school grounds.”
The theme for this year’s National School Lunch week is “Now Playing” and it’s “centered around Hollywood themed processes,” Barrett explained. “So anything that could be done on a movie theater basis, fun and having tickets to go through lunch line, you know, go through the meal process or special things that could connect. Now Playing in the theater role with the National School Lunch Program would just be something that would add to the perspective of receiving a meal and having fun, and that’s what National School Lunch week is, just really all centered around having fun with children.”
Republished with permission WSFA 12 News.
Oct
Washington, DC – During National School Lunch Week, we celebrate our Nation’s commitment to providing nutritious food to millions of students, and we recognize the many dedicated food service professionals and administrators who help carry out this mission. In a typical year, the National School Lunch Program provides meals to nearly 30 million schoolchildren every day across the country. These meals enable students in need to eat nutritious meals, which helps them achieve academic success and reach their full potential.
The National School Lunch Program succeeds because of the strong partnerships between the Federal Government and State governments, food service professionals, and local school leaders. Our Nation’s farmers, ranchers, and producers are also essential to providing the food our children eat. Since this program was established in 1946, the collaboration between these key players has been vital to its success, and their cooperation has never been more crucial than during this pivotal time in our Nation’s history.
In recent months, it has become increasingly evident just how many families depend on the meals provided at school. As thousands of schools transitioned to remote learning in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act to ensure schools could continue serving children the meals they need. My Administration also launched the innovative public-private partnership “Meals to You,” which delivered more than 40 million nutritious meals to children in rural areas while schools were closed. In the battle with this invisible enemy, resilience and flexibility have been critical to keeping our children safe and fed, and we are thankful for the extra efforts that have been made to achieve this goal.
Throughout the last few months, my Administration has recognized that our children’s well-being depends so much on their access to schools. I have encouraged all schools to safely reopen, and we want to ensure that they are as prepared as ever to provide healthy meals to all students. In June, my Administration invested in the health of students by awarding more than $12.1 million — a record amount — in Farm to School Grants. These funds will help bring clean, fresh, and locally‑grown foods into schools and communities as they reopen, and will help foster economic opportunity for America’s farmers as we continue our economic comeback. Additionally, on October 9, my Administration extended flexibilities and waived requirements to continue operating the summer meals program and the seamless summer option at no cost until the end of the school year. This program allows any child under 18 to get a free meal at a meal distribution site, and allows parents and guardians to pick up meals for their children. We are proud of these measures and others that we have taken to help ensure that all students have access to nutritious food.
To emphasize the importance of the National School Lunch Program, the Congress, by joint resolution of October 9, 1962 (Public Law 87–780), has designated the week beginning on the second Sunday in October each year as “National School Lunch Week,” and has requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 11 through October 17, 2020, as National School Lunch Week. I call upon all Americans to join the countless individuals who administer the National School Lunch Program in activities that support and promote awareness of the health and well-being of our Nation’s children.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Aug
WATCH: PCS’s Paypams Facilitates Delivery Options for Meals During Remote Learning
Dave 0 comments PayPAMS, School Lunch News From Around The USA
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools nutrition leaders introduced a meal bundle program that will enable students to get meals even as the district opens in fully-remote learning.
With CMS Eats at Home, families can preorder meal bundles to be delivered once weekly or for pick up at one of 40 CMS sites.
Bundles include five breakfasts and five lunches. Families will begin receiving meals the week of Sept. 1.
RELATED: Ordering software for serving school meal anywhere – OrderNOW by PCS/PayPAMS
Families will be able to preorder using the district’s existing PayPAMS system. Families who are not registered for PayPAMS can register at https://paypams.com/.
Meal bundle deliveries for the week of Sept. 1 must be ordered by Aug. 18 and order for pick up by Aug. 26.
The program is free for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students enrolled in Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) schools. All other families can purchase meal bundles for $15 per week.
Families must complete the 2020-2021 family meal application to see if they qualify for meal benefits. The online application can be completed by clicking here.
Dec
North Andover Sustainability Committee member and mom Joanna O’Connell set out on a mission to cut down on food waste in North Andover schools, and with the help of eco-conscious students and lunchroom and custodial staff, that mission is being accomplished.
“We were already recycling really well as a school district,” O’Connell said as she sipped coffee at Good Day Café on High Street waiting for school lunch periods to begin so she could check out their progress. “We were able to move past that and focus on food waste, which is good.”
RELATED: Reduce Overproduction & Waste with Traknow
Here’s the process:
- Kids separate their lunch waste by recyclables and food and put the food waste into green bins at the end of lunch, with student helpers guiding them.
- The custodians (O’Connell got them wheels for the trash barrels) then bring the waste outside to a specified composting bin.
- Merrimack Valley-based OffBeet Compost comes and picks up the bins twice a week.
- OffBeet turns that waste into soil at sites in Haverhill and Lowell, which is then sold to local farms, and the company’s owner also ships some to people who are in an OffBeet program. O’Connell, for example, pays $5 a week and leaves her compost outside for them to pick up, and twice a year she gets soil back.
The program, funded by the state this year, so far involves the Thomson and Kittredge elementary schools as well as North Andover Middle School and seeks to cut 30 percent of the town’s trash truck waste by removing compostable stuff from the trash stream.
Teachers helped get the kids excited with training videos about composting and the importance of cutting down on food waste.
“I kind of said to them, ‘We’re going to take out this 30 percent, we’re going to get it to a local farm, and they’re going to move it around, care for it, and in nine months or so, it’s going to turn back into soil, and that soil is then going to be used to plant your crops that you’re then eating,’” O’Connell said.
Benefits of school composting programs include:
- Cutting down on food waste
- Allowing kids who hear scary environmental news on a daily basis to get involved in fixing the problems
- Teaching kids about nature and science with hands-on experience
- Less work for the custodial staff who have to lug around trash bags after lunch
- Giving kids a purpose they can carry with them into adulthood and maybe save the world’s environmental issues
Read Full Article at North Andover WickedLocal
Nov
A newly introduced federal bill seeks to heighten security at American schools by encouraging districts to adopt social media monitoring programs.
The controversial practice, which uses algorithms to crawl and index public profiles of popular sites like Twitter and Facebook, has grown in popularity over the last several years, as administrators look to new and emergent technologies to heighten school safety — and potentially head off the next mass shooting.
Now the Restoring, Enhancing, Securing, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts Act or RESPONSE Act, introduced by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, advocates for numerous policies aimed at increasing school security, including a “Children’s Internet Protection” amendment that encourages districts to invest in programs that detect “online activities of minors who are at risk of committing self-harm or extreme violence against others.” Under the bill, almost all federally funded schools would be required to install software of this kind.
The bill comes at a time when schools are already investing more heavily in this technology. Earlier this year, a review by the Brennan Center for Justice of self-reported procurement orders from schools across the country showed that the number of school districts purchasing such software rose from just 6 in 2013 to 63 in 2018…
While there is a growing demand for these services, researchers are largely split on whether these programs actually prevent violence.
“Aside from anecdotes promoted by the companies that sell this software, there is no proof that these surveillance tools work,” the Brennan Center report concludes, also critiquing the software’s propensity for error, and the kinds of misinterpretation that can take place when machines sift through the slang-saturated conversations of teenagers.
When paired with other forms of surveillance, the software has concerned critics for its broad reach and lack of public oversight.
The Aspen Institute, for instance, recently released a brief report on data collection at school systems in Florida, where the state’s Department of Education recently launched a controversial Schools Safety Portal (FSSP). The portal mandates that state schools collect large amounts of student data — a process that is augmented by the deployment of social media monitoring programs.
The report argues that “preventing school shootings through data is fraught with ethical and technical risks, including a lack of data quality and the potential for biases across multiple levels of predictive algorithms.” The report doesn’t outright indict the practice itself, arguing instead that policies should be developed to increase process transparency and accountability, while deploying experts to ensure data quality.
The RESPONSE Act has seen significant support among a constellation of mental health and law enforcement organizations. In October, the bill was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary where it is awaiting further review.
Read Full Article at Governing.com
Nov
After a public health crisis in Flint, Michigan, triggered by high levels of lead in the drinking water, a number of programs are working to encourage good nutrition for children in order to prevent recurring effects of the neurotoxin on growing bodies. John Yang reports.
See Transcript of interview at PBS
Oct
There’s a scene in the movie Mean Girls where new student Cady Heron gets a lesson from her friend, Janice Ian, about the social hierarchy of the high school cafeteria.
“Where you sit in the cafeteria is crucial,” Janice says. She then maps out the cliques, including preps, jocks and, of course, the “plastics.
The scene is an exaggeration of a common experience: the stress of finding your place in a school cafeteria. But Wisconsin resident Smitha Chintamaneni can’t relate.
“I’ve never had that experience,” she said. “I’ve never been at the cool kids’ table or the nerd table. We never had that at my school.”
Chintamaneni is an alum of the University School of Milwaukee, a private K-12 school in the suburb of River Hills. One of the most unusual things about the University School is its long-standing tradition of assigned lunch seating.
For new students, the seating rules can be a welcome relief. Sophomore Kylie Burger went to public elementary and middle schools before coming to the University School her freshman year of high school.
“At first I was really hyped,” said Kylie, 15. “I moved a lot with middle school, and usually I would sit alone. So I was excited to not sit alone at a table all year.”
The students are randomly assigned to eight-person circular tables, which rotate depending on that day’s schedule. Each has a mix of kids from different grades, with one teacher whose job is to get the table talking. Kylie says it doesn’t always go as planned.
“Sometimes it gets super awkward at tables,” she explained. “Like the conversation goes, ‘OK, what did you just come out of?’ ‘Math.’ ‘OK.’ And that was really kind of where it ends.”
Read more about School Lunch Assigned Seating at HERE
Sep
The facial recognition market is a fast-growing industry expected to generate a value of almost $9B annually by 2022. Part of that market includes the education sector.
Currently, governments are the biggest consumers of this technology because of its ability to deter crime. The “eye in the sky” watching over everyone is able to detect facial features, allow expedient access or deny it, and identify persons of interest. Large cities like Chicago and Detroit have already opted into using biometric recognition.
Some people find Big Brother technology comforting, and others find it invasive. What if this same software is used in the schools your children attend or where you teach?
Uses for facial recognition software in education
There’s no doubt that technology has made it possible to get more done in a day. Where we once had to perform many tasks in education by hand, we now use technology as an assistant.
Software helps teachers provide customized lessons, analyze data, and even keep track of behavior. Technology saves teachers time, which something they don’t have a lot of. Think about all the clerical tasks a teacher performs each day, like taking attendance or recording which students eat lunch in the cafeteria, and which foods they select.
Facial recognition software can significantly reduce the time teachers spend performing clerical duties like these. Students actions and behaviors can be matched to a face, and then the information is either shared (with the registrar/attendance clerk and the food services department) or stored for later access.
The teacher is free to spend more time preparing or delivering instruction.
Facial recognition software can also shorten the time students take to log in to learning programs. Within a second, the software maps facial features and approves access, saving students from having to log and type a password each time they want to use a computer.
Read more at The Tech Advocate
Aug
What happens when a student incurs debt from meals provided at school?
One Pennsylvania school district tried to collect on that debt by sending parents a letter threatening that their children could be taken from them.
The New York Times reported on the case:
“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch,” read the letter, which was signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District. “This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care.”
This letter is just one of many recent examples across the country of students and families being penalized for failing to pay their debt from school meals.
In Rhode Island, two school districts began using collection agencies to recover school lunch debt. In one district, the debt had reached $90,000.
What does this issue reveal about American families? And what impact does it have on students?
From Eater:
Some states are seeing school lunch debt soar into the millions of dollars, but the exact amount of lunch debt schools nationwide have accumulated collectively isn’t known because the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t collect or provide that data. As an issue that disproportionately involves marginalized families — those in poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, or even undocumented immigrants afraid to participate in the federal free lunch program — lunch debt magnifies the widespread economic and structural inequities that have historically existed in the U.S. It also has a very real effect on children — whether causing them [to] go hungry (since school meals are the only meals some children eat in a day), hurting their self-esteem, or both.
Jul
Nutritionists and dietitians from around the country are working to made kids’ school lunches healthier and more delicious.
The School Nutrition Association hosted its 73rd annual National Conference this week at the America’s Center Convention Complex in downtown St. Louis. The two-day convention allowed school nutrition professionals from around the country to sample food and recipes, test equipment and software, and share the best practices for meeting federal nutrition requirements.
More than 350 companies set up booths and handed out samples on Monday and Tuesday. Chef and Registered Dietitian Brenda Wattles writes recipes for school lunches nationwide. She stresses the importance of creating meals catered to kids and teens with changing palates.
“We see kids’ pallets increasing. We see a trend in the rise of ethnic foods, they want to try a lot of different flavors,” she said.
During the convention, experts sampled meals like ramen bowls and Korean barbecue. They’ll then decide whether school children in their area would benefit from offering it on the school’s lunch menu.
Wattles said the focus is on incorporating fresh fruits and vegetables into each meal. She hopes healthy meals like kale salad with chicken and black bean burgers will inspire children and teens to make nutritious meals a priority.
“Sometimes it takes them 10 times to try something before they eat it.” Said Wattles.
Experts said many of these options could come to school lunch menus across the country in the next year.
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