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America’s Second-Largest School District Says No To McDonald’s McTeacher’s Nights

America’s Second-Largest School District Says No To McDonald’s McTeacher’s Nights

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

In a victory for public health, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country, adopted a resolution to end McDonald’s McTeacher’s Nights this April.

The resolution comes as millions of parents, educators and health professionals call on junk food corporations to stop kid-targeted marketing. To date, United Teachers Los Angeles, the National Education Association and more than 50 state and local teachers unions, representing more than 3 million educators nationwide, have demanded junk food corporations stop marketing to children in schools.

McTeacher’s Nights are events at which McDonald’s invites teachers to “work” behind a McDonald’s counter and serve McDonald’s burgers, fries, and soda to students, students’ families, and other people eating at the restaurant. McDonald’s, in return, donates a small percentage of the night’s proceeds to the school—often amounting to only $1-2 per student.

While McDonald’s enjoys free labor and the kind of marketing money can’t buy, schools are left with negligible proceeds, and teachers must face the impossible challenge of choosing between much-needed funds and educating students about health. Yet despite challenges from educators, parents, and health professionals, McDonald’s has continued to promote the events across the country. Since 2013, more than 700 McTeacher’s Night events have been documented in more than 30 states.

Cecily Myart-Cruz, the vice-president of United Teachers Los Angeles, has challenged McDonald‘s to end McTeacher’s Night events. “Calling McTeacher’s Nights ‘fundraisers’ just doesn’t hold up—it’s a raw deal for schools and an even worse deal for our students,” Myart-Cruz has said. “This should be a wakeup call for corporations like McDonald’s: We’re not going to tolerate them targeting our kids!”

Steve Zimmer, president of the LAUSD Governing Board, acted as the lead sponsor of the resolution. “I am grateful to my colleagues for joining me in taking a comprehensive view of our Good Food Purchasing Policy and how other policies might be in conflict with that. Our Board responsibilities extend well beyond the classroom,” he said.

“While I am thankful to the independent McDonald’s operators and business partners for their desire to support our students, I look forward to working with them to support our schools without relying on the labor of our teachers or interest of our families to promote food and other products that are in conflict with existing policies.”

The passage of this resolution protects over 640,000 K-12 students within the Los Angeles school district from junk food sponsorships and builds on a foundation of strong food policy within LAUSD. For instance, LAUSD adopted school sponsorship guidelines that provided the framework for this resolution and enacted the groundbreaking Good Food Purchasing Policy program that sets standards for  food within the district to be sustainable, healthy, humane and fairly produced.

Sriram Madhusoodanan is the director of the Value [the] Meal campaign at Corporate Accountability International.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

Food Companies Back Group Fighting Nutrition Standards On Capitol Hill

Food Companies Back Group Fighting Nutrition Standards On Capitol Hill

By Allison Sherry, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

WASHINGTON — A special interest group representing school nutritionists and backed financially by big food companies — including six from Minnesota — is pushing legislation that would allow school districts to bypass new lunch rules restricting sodium and requiring more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

The Minnesota companies — Schwan’s, General Mills, Cargill, Land O’Lakes, Hormel, and Michael Foods — have officially stayed neutral on the issue, taking no position on the dispute on Capitol Hill. Some companies, such as General Mills, say they already are working on products that would conform to the new standards.

Instead, the fight over the phased-in nutritional rules signed into law in 2010 is being waged by the School Nutrition Association. Once a genial, low-profile school nutrition advocacy group that initially supported the new rules, the SNA now is leading an aggressive charge in lobbying Capitol Hill for waivers from those very requirements.

The rules require school districts to gradually reduce sodium, calories, and starch while increasing vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. When passed in 2010, it had bipartisan support that stretched from first lady Michelle Obama to the U.S. Senate and some House Republicans. School districts and the SNA were among the cheerleaders.

That has all changed. The SNA now is pitted against more than 200 health organizations such as the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association, which support keeping the requirements intact. Even the food industry, which has long funded the SNA, is publicly distancing itself from the group’s prominent lobbying efforts.

The SNA, which has local operations in every state, is urging lawmakers to adopt waivers that would allow school districts that are losing money on school meals to opt out of the rules. That position is backed strongly by Republicans, including Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The White House has threatened a veto of waivers to the nutritional rules.

Jean Ronnei, vice president of SNA and chief operating officer for St. Paul public schools, said her district has been able to make the new rules work so far, but she wants flexibility going forward. She worries about the growing number of students dropping out of the school lunch program.

“I’m losing customers,” Ronnei said. “What do I decide to do? Charge more for that entree?”

The business of feeding school kids is lucrative: The Department of Agriculture this year will devote $16.5 billion to pay for students’ lunches, breakfasts, milk, snacks, and state administrative expenses.

Compliance with the new standards so far is high. More than 90 percent of schools across the country meet the current standards.
Yet the SNA has become increasingly dogged in its efforts to obtain waivers that would allow some schools to deviate. Association officials cite the healthier food — more whole wheat, fruits and vegetables, and less salt — as a reason behind falling participation in the school lunch program. They also say the 6 cents more given by the feds for lunches meeting the requirements fails to offset the higher cost of fruits and vegetables.

The SNA for years worked from a different playbook. It employed an old-school Washington lobbying firm that specialized in agriculture. It worked closely with the USDA, made few waves and captured even fewer headlines.

That changed last year. The SNA dumped its old lobbyist and hired Barnes & Thornburg, a group known for its top-notch, aggressive grass-roots outreach, whose client roster includes the National Rifle Association. The NRA last year snuffed out two major gun control measures in the U.S. Senate, employing a similar grass-roots approach.

Nutritional advocates and USDA officials say privately that with the new SNA lobbyist came a new, tougher approach. SNA stopped working through the executive branch and began pushing legislative fixes. In media calls, school directors told stories of food waste and dwindling bottom lines, all because of the new rules.

USDAGov via Flickr

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First Lady Decries Plan To Lower School Lunch Nutrition Standards

First Lady Decries Plan To Lower School Lunch Nutrition Standards

By Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — After steering clear of most messy legislative battles, first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday publicly took on lawmakers, food companies and lunch ladies who say the school lunch law she championed nearly four years ago is leading kids to brown bag it.

The attempt to scale back new nutrition standards for the federal school lunch program is unacceptable, Obama declared at a meeting with school nutrition officials that launched her public campaign to defend the law. She blasted lawmakers for playing “politics with our kids’ health” and suggested they were trying to “roll back everything we have worked for.”

“It’s unacceptable to me not just as first lady, but also as a mother,” she said.

The unusually confrontational remarks were a departure for a first lady who has largely sought to work with the food industry and around Congress in her campaign against childhood obesity. As the nation’s best-known healthy-eating advocate, Obama has typically emphasized partnerships and pledges with the makers of gummy fruit snacks and sweetened cereals, aiming for incremental changes in their products and increased marketing of healthier options.

Since lobbying on behalf of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which set new standards for school food, Obama has rarely waded into legislative or regulatory debates. The law set guidelines for the amount of sodium in school lunches and breakfasts and targets for more whole grains and fresh fruit.

But the law is being challenged in Congress by the School Nutrition Association, a coalition of school officials and the food companies that sell mini-pizzas, yogurt, pastas and chicken nuggets to schools. Its industry members include Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola, Chobani Greek yogurt and Tyson Food Service, according to the group’s web site.

The group supported the law in 2010, but its leaders now say the regulations it spawned are too rigid.

House Republicans have backed the group’s efforts. The House Appropriations Committee is to vote Thursday on a provision that would allow school districts that have been operating at a loss to seek a one-year waiver from the nutrition guidelines. The measure is expected to win approval in the House.

The waiver is aimed at schools that have seen resources slide as more paying students are opting out of school lunches and bringing their own food. Some districts say they have had trouble finding affordable products that meet the nutrition standards; meanwhile, they say, they’ve watched students throw away large amounts of the healthy food that land on their trays.

“These new federal regulations should not drive local school nutrition programs underwater. This temporary one-year waiver simply throws them a lifeline,” said Brian Rell, a spokesman for Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL) chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s agriculture subcommittee, which approved the provision on a voice vote last week.

Supporters of the waiver described it as a modest attempt to add flexibility to the program and said the first lady’s response seemed out of proportion.

But the White House has appeared eager to play offense to protect a key piece of the first lady’s legacy. White House officials helped with a letter by former presidents of the School Nutrition Association opposing the waiver plan.

The association is also seeking other changes to the law, including scrapping a requirement that foods be 100 percent whole-grain by July 2014 and sticking with the current 50 percent target; holding to the newly enacted standard for sodium rather than a lower target scheduled to go into effect in a few years; and eliminating the requirement that students take a fruit or vegetable, regardless of whether they plan to eat it.

The association “does not want to gut the nutrition standards — we support many of the requirements. Our request for flexibility under the new standards does not come from industry or politics; it comes from thousands of school cafeteria professionals who have shown how these overly prescriptive regulations are hindering their effort to get students to eat healthy school meals,” said President Leah Schmidt, in a response to the first lady’s event.

The White House argues that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, has been flexible. The USDA already delayed a whole-grain provision for pasta, heeding complaints that some such pastas were unpopular and could be hard to find. Officials argued against having lawmakers determine what is nutritious, noting that lawmakers have bent to food industry complaints in the past, such as an effort in 2011 to classify pizza with tomato sauce as a vegetable.

“What we’re not going to do is put politics and interests ahead of what’s good for our kids and allow politicians to set nutrition standards,” said Sam Kass, director of the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign and the White House chef. Kass said the first lady’s office hoped to amplify the voices of those school officials who think the guidelines are helping kids eat healthier diets. The USDA estimates that 90 percent of schools are in compliance.

On Tuesday, David Binkle, director of food services for the Los Angeles Unified School District, joined the first lady for the event. Binkle noted that he was a member of the School Nutrition Association, but said its “hard line” on the law did not reflect his views. Binkle said he had not had trouble procuring food that meets the federal guidelines or stricter local nutrition standards and noted that the “plate waste” critics point to was a problem before the 2010 law.

“In fact, we don’t serve the typical corn dog and chicken nuggets,” he said. “We don’t even have pizza on the menu.”

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski