If you are a San Francisco student, parent, teacher, principal, community organization, or taxpayer, your voice is needed on SF school food! Take our short survey now.
In 2003, San Francisco’s public schools created a ground-breaking Wellness Policy that led the way to boldly removing vending machines and junk food from our city’s public schools. Since then, federal mandates have required that all districts create such Wellness Policies, adding power to the messages contained in ours.
Now, we have an opportunity to further raise the bar and to articulate what truly healthy schools for our city’s youth would look like! We have put together some possible additions to the SFUSD Wellness Policy—ideas gathered from other schools—including: encouraging more nutrition education through school gardens, more fresh produce that is locally grown, more recycling in the cafeterias, more opportunities for physical activity, and more connections between what students learn about healthy eating and the foods we offer at school. We want to connect the dots between a healthy environment, healthy youth, and our city’s schools!
We’ve created a survey that asks your priorities in these areas, including drafts of sample policies. These are just rough ideas so we need all the input we can get. We will share your priorities with the district’s Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee for consideration in revisions of the policy.
Click Here to take our Survey
Please take the survey as soon as possible – by this Friday or at least Monday if you can!
For some background on our involvement in this work, please read About Urban Sprouts: History.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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1 comment:
One thing to note - the SFUSD wellness policy did not remove vending machines from schools. It removed soda and other low nutrient/high calorie foods from the machines, and sets nutrition standards for all food sold or served to students. Compliance with the policy is the responsibility of every school Principal; some work hard to comply, others are more lax.
Also, those taking your survey really should be asked where they feel the money should come from to pay for some of the more costly ideas you propose. Since SFUSD's Student Nutrition Services already runs a big deficit, which must be covered out of the district's general fund (leaving less money for teacher salaries, books, and other essential classroom needs), if SNS is being asked to go even deeper into debt to pay for (as an example) all-organic food, where should this money come from?
Possible answers could include:
-the City
-the state
-the federal government
-contributions from the local food community
-local philanthropic organizations
-the school district general fund
Then perhaps another question asking what each respondent is personally willing to do to help pay for the changes being requested. Possible answers:
-donate money
-help write grant proposals
-approach local food community for support
-lobby the City/state/federal govt. for more funding for school food
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