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Nonfat chocolate milk and fruit juice will no longer be served to students at three schools in the Redwood City School District starting March 1, according to a district announcement.
The menu modification is part of a pilot project that will run through the end of the year at three K-5 schools—Henry Ford, Orion and Taft—in an effort “to help reduce the overall sugar intake of students,” Superintendent John Baker wrote in his monthly newsletter. Students will be able to choose between lowfat or nonfat milk, as well as an assortment of fresh fruit, during breakfast and lunch.
These three schools were chosen because they're smaller, and thus easier to implement a new program in, and because they "represent a wide demographic," according to RCSD Director of Communications Jorge Quintana.
This change comes in the midst of an ongoing effort led by Redwood City parents to fight to eliminate foods with high sugar, fat and salt content from school meals and replace them with healthier, fresher options.
“The pilot is based off of a compilation of recent research put together by pediatricians in our coalition,” said Jessica Shade, parent advocate and chair of the Redwood City Healthy School Meals Committee. The research, she added, shows the “health benefits to children when schools serve options with lower sugar content.”
Last fall, Shade, whose daughter is in kindergarten at Orion, helped form the Healthy School Meals Committee, which initially only included other parents from Orion.
“But I knew that it was a district-wide issue,” she said. “So we started reaching out to other schools and just had overwhelming responses from parents who are interested in supporting the district in creating this transformative food program for Redwood City.”
The committee hosted their first meeting in late September, during which nearly two dozen attendees discussed the current school food offerings and what, ideally, they’d like to see on the menu. Over the course of several meetings, they came up with a vision and mission, as well as a list of long- and short-term goals.
In November, after hearing from Baker that the school board was planning a special study session to discuss child nutrition, the committee drafted a report including suggested changes and research about other California school districts that enacted significant school menu changes. Among their recommendations were eliminating high-sugar breakfast items (such as cinnamon rolls, oatmeal bars, sugary cereals and chocolate milk) and incorporating more scratch cooking into school meals. The materials were co-signed by nearly 90 parents throughout the district.
Together, school-provided breakfasts and lunches can contribute over half of a students’ daily caloric intake, according to a 2018 study from the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And for children who are food insecure, that percentage can be even higher.
The district’s Child Nutrition Services (CNS) has been very responsive, said Shade, who added that CNS removed the two sweetest types of cereals as well as cinnamon rolls and oatmeal bars from the breakfast menu soon after.
Per USDA guidelines, all schools must provide students with at least 1 cup of fruit at breakfast and 1/2 cup at lunch.
"RCSD exceeds these guidelines by offering a wide selection of fresh fruits, canned fruits, and dried fruits which can include apples, sliced and whole oranges, pears, and bananas," Quintana wrote in an email. "We also add seasonal items such as tangerines, cara cara oranges, and strawberries."
According Quintana, the weekly menu is created in accordance with federal and state guidelines by CNS management, who also oversee regular, day-to-day menu changes. Any district-wide modifications to the menu or meal operations, because of new regulations or feedback from parents, would be discussed during CNS committee meetings.
Since launching, the Healthy School Meals Committee has continued to push for amendments to the school menu.
During their December meeting, they hosted a discussion with local food service leaders, including Bonnie Christensen, the Director of Berkeley Unified School District's Nutrition Services, and Judi Shills of Sausalito’s Conscious Kitchen, both of whom helped bring more organic and scratch-cooked meals to their local school districts.
Over the last couple of months, the committee has also been seeking community input on school meals, Shade said.
In addition to speaking directly with local parents, students and teachers at schools and other community centers in North Fair Oaks, they distributed an online survey and published polls on Facebook and Nextdoor. Altogether, 620 people shared their input on the RCSD’s current food offerings.
Among participating Redwood City residents, 86.1% supported replacing juice with fresh fruit and vegetable options and 79.4% thought chocolate milk should be replaced with regular milk. When narrowed down to only parents, over 90% supported both of those recommendations.
“I am very supportive of our hard-working and dedicated School Board and Childhood Nutrition Department (Child Nutrition Services), and none of the feedback I share should reflect negatively on them,” she wrote in an email. “Rather, this is an opportunity to use school meals as a tool for equity, and that improving school meals will have a disproportionate impact on our families experiencing food insecurities.”
Last summer, California became the first state to adopt a universal meal program, making breakfast and lunch free to all public school students. The program, which went into effect at the beginning of the fall term, is accessible to some 6.2 million students statewide.
In April 2021, the school board approved a contract of $2.3 million with food services company Sodexo, for an estimated 1.5 million meals throughout the regular school year and summer school program, according to Quintana.
The latest menu changes will go into effect on March 1, which also marks the beginning of National Nutrition Month. The district recently brought pozole and caeser salad back to the lunch menu, according to Quintana. It also plans to add pupusas, cheese tamales, and scratch-made vegetarian enchiladas as well as organic cereal for breakfast.
He added that, while menus are continuously updated, supply chain issues and labor shortages during the pandemic have slowed the process significantly this year.
Shade said she hopes that these incremental modifications are the beginning of larger school meal transformations.
“They are taking the right steps to move us toward the future,” she said, adding that the district has brought parent advocates onto the Childhood Nutrition and RCSD Wellness Committees. “Now we need to plan for improving the meal quality and increasing fresh ingredients into entrees.”
Though she acknowledged that transforming an entire district meal plan is no small task, she insisted it’s doable—and has been done.
“Vacaville’s done it; Berkeley's done it; Sausalito’s done it. All these districts surrounding us have done it,” she said. “So we're really optimistic that Redwood City can turn into a leader for school meals.”
