A Tiny Victory - Democratic Underground

Snoutport

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Sun Jun-19-11 01:09 AM
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A Tiny Victory

A real tiny victory but one that is very important to me.

As some of you might know, I have been in a bit of a battle with the cafeteria that supplies breakfast and lunch to my classroom. We are, basically, a satellite campus and so my students get sack lunches.

Cruddy, horrible sack lunches. One day the sodium in the food provided 129% of the recommended sodium intake, they send fruit leather instead of fruit (.7 oz of shoe leather = a daily serving of fruit (according to the package), corn nuts instead of vegetables (1 bag of corn nuts = 3/8 cup of corn-a full veggie serving!) and these donut things that are nothing but sugar and carbs. On some days they would send these prepackaged fruit loops sort of cereal. They would send one or two white milks and the rest were chocolate. My students were having to eat fruit loops with chocolate milk! GROSS. I have medically fragile students and some of this food was poison for them. A good portion of my class funds were spent buying better food this year.

I had complained and complained to the point I had been barred from coming into the cafeteria. On the days it was my turn to pick up lunches they were outside the door waiting for me on a cart (a few feet from the dumpster). I had been warned not to make waves. I was told I was not allowed to talk to any cafeteria staff.

But, as the year wound down and the districts are pinching pennies, the food got worse and worse. A couple of weeks ago it was the worst breakfast and lunch ever. 75 carbs in the breakfast alone. I snapped and I finally made a formal complaint to the head of nutrition services. I told her ethically and morally I could not feed my students the food. I asked her if she would feed her child a fruit strip INSTEAD of a piece of fruit. I asked her if corn nuts were a vegetable and what would happen if people knew the schools were serving them instead of a fresh vegetable.

I was reprimanded by my supervisor and the head teacher at my school.

I was in trouble until I said the magic words: "One of my students has had dramatic weight loss and his doctor wants the complete menu of what we have been serving him". When I said that suddenly the mood of everything shifted. They asked me to do some research on foods that would work to serve in my room. I gave them a list and on Friday I got a copy of an email from nutrition services to the cafeteria. It basically said:

Next year my class will get a case of granola, a case of unsweetened cereal and a case of instant oatmeal for us to prepare in the room. When the case runs out we order a new one. All of our fruit is to be fresh fruit. No chocolate milk. They contacted Jennie-O to see if there is a less salty lunch meat.

And to top it off I got approval to build raised garden beds so my students can grow some of their own vegetables.

It is a small victory with all the terrible trouble going on in schools right now but I wanted to share it with you all. Sometimes the teachers win. Let's hope for more of that. :9