More and more concerned citizens are actively working to improve San Francisco school food. From parent meetings to Commonwealth Club conversations to new coalitions, the conversation is a hot topic—and an incredibly complicated one.
I jumped into the national and local school-food fray because I feel a deep need to help correct a system gone totally wrong. Edible San Francisco readers don’t need a lecture on the offenses of public school lunches: suffice to say that corporations have been allowed to market or serve junk food directly to kids for too long, while policies and lack of funds cripple even those who want to feed “real” food to students from doing so.
Sure, some school districts across the country make it work and are able to source from local farms and cook from central kitchens, or if they’re lucky, from on-site kitchens that serve up fresh food. But that’s mostly not the case in San Francisco.
While there have been a few great programs, like a farm-to-school salad bar and a No Child Left Hungry policy (which mandates that every hungry child be fed, regardless of whether or not their parent has filled out the required forms for school reimbursement), many programs will be axed because of the budget deficits. Mayor Gavin Newsom deserves credit for funding salad bars that have increased the amount of fresh produce in the schools. This is the first time the city put money directly into the school meals program.
I’ve spent the last few months studying the challenges of San Francisco’s school-food system. Through a Slow Food School Food Working Group I help run, I’ve met with Paula Jones, the city’s director of food systems for the department of public health, and Paul Ash, the director of the San Francisco Food Bank, and with parent advocates, nutritionists and concerned citizens. None of these conversations have led me to believe there’s an easy fix, or the infrastructure for a central kitchen like the one Berkeley’s school system enjoys. But there is hope, and a groundswell of committed people working toward a brighter future.
That brighter future requires that we build a strong foundation for our children’s health by serving them real food at school. Real food is a down payment on health care reform and an investment in America’s future prosperity. Real food is food that is good for our children, good for the people who grow it, and good for the planet. It is delicious, healthy, and usually locally grown.
At a recent parent meeting at Mission High School, Jones led the audience through a detailed presentation that outlined some of the core situations and procedures in our city’s schools. School meals are “underfunded—especially in expensive cities like San Francisco—highly regulated, and complex. San Francisco needs a long-term plan to improve school food and community-wide support to fund systematic changes.”
The system is an intricate web of numbers, policies, limited resources, and numerous initiatives, some successful and others not. San Francisco school food programs are run by the Student Nutrition Services Department, which includes a director, administrative staff, and cafeteria workers. These fewer than 250 employees, many of whom work part-time, are responsible for serving 22,100 lunches, 5,600 breakfasts, and 7,400 snacks to more than 55,000 students a day on a budget of less than $16.5 million. This figure will rise to just under $18 million next school year. (See “The Business of School Lunch,")
By necessity, San Francisco school lunches rely heavily on food produced and shipped by Chicago-based Preferred Meal Systems, then prepared off-site and heated in dilapidated ovens on school grounds. The main hurdles to improving the meals are money, money and more money. Costs such as labor and benefits, supplies, and transportation, as well as indirect costs such as IT services, garbage, and pest control, all must come out of the monies provided by the National School Lunch program governed by the USDA.
Soon, Congress will have a chance to significantly affect the way children eat in our schools. The Child Nutrition Act, with power akin to that of the Farm Bill, comes up for reauthorization by the Senate and House sometime this year or early next. This act is the heart of the federal funding that provides the reimbursements that public schools need to keep their costs within budget. Although it is admittedly a weak opportunity for reform, given the country’s economic woes, it is an opportunity for voices to be heard.
How can you get involved?
Talk to your representatives:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can be a strong ally. We need her support in two key aspects of the reauthorization, both of which would bring more resources into SFUSD’s current school food program. Write to Pelosi and Senator Diane Feinstein urging them to increase funding to the Child Nutrition Act so as to increase reimbursement rates in areas with higher cost of living, like San Francisco, and to increase the eligibility cutoff for subsidized meals in high-cost areas. Printed, signed, and mailed letters with individual messages make the biggest impact.
Eat-in with us:
Join Slow Food USA’s national Time for Lunch Campaign, which asks Congress to significantly invest in children’s health, protect against food that puts children at risk, and teach children healthy habits that will last through life. In the next three months, Slow Food chapters across the nation will be contacting legislators and organizing community events that will culminate in a national Eat-in on Labor Day. We need your help in San Francisco: to get involved, write to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Attend Board of Education and Nutrition Committee meetings:
Tell Superintendent Carlos Garcia and other officials you care about healthy food in public schools. Educate yourself: Learn more about the SFUSD policies and read reports at www.sffood.org, which also has more background information on the Child Nutrition Act as well as general SFUSD school food issues.
Related: The Business of School Lunch by Molly Watson
Jen Dalton is a San Francisco–based writer whose current projects include a cooking show promoting Care2.com’s farmers’ market contest. She is also the City Slicker Eats editor for CivilEats.com, a food and politics blog, and one of the cofounders of Kitchen Table Talks.
This content was published in the September 2009 Edible San Francisco Magazine. © 2009 Edible San Francisco. No part of this article may be reproduced without the written consent of the author or publisher.
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