Cindy Marion, nutrition director for the Stokes County (N.C.) School District, knew her state's Child Nutrition Act needed change. To get it, she decided to take matters into her own hands by going to the state's general assembly to lobby for the revised standards her district needed.
Cindy Marion is nutrition director for the Stokes County School District in North Carolina, which encompasses 18 schools and 7,000 students. Here, she shares her experiences lobbying her state’s government officials for statewide funding of, and revised standards for, her district as it sought to improve the nutritional quality of school meals.
“In North Carolina we ended up changing our requirements. We were able to go to the North Carolina General Assembly to say that we needed to modify them to something that was more practical in our region.
After the new Child Nutrition Act was released, we took those standards and went to the general assembly and said we would like the opportunity to run a pilot, and we want to be held harmless for any financial losses.
When we started running the pilots we had to say, what’s available in these market areas? What’s practical in a school environment? We ran into some obstacles, and we realized we would have to tweak those standards a little to make them work in our schools. For example, we had a requirement for whole grain foods, but we found in some rural school districts on the coast and in the mountains, we were having difficulties getting these products. Getting fresh fruit and vegetable deliveries was also difficult for some districts.
We went to the legislature and explained to them that it was critical that we be able to rewrite the standards. When you just can’t get a product, what are you going to do?
The general assembly allowed us to put together a team of directors and people from child nutrition and public health, and we modified our standards so that they would benefit students but also fit into the school environment. The changes were not dramatic. For example, instead of a limit of 30% of calories from fat, we adhere to a range of 20-35%.
After running those pilots for about five months, the average loss per school was $5,377. Here in North Carolina, 52% of our budget comes from student purchases, so we are looking at a lot of money that comes from students, and particularly à la carte sales. When you take away a lot of à la carte items and student favorites, that money has to be replaced with something. The increase in fruits and vegetables and the extra requirements for storage and prep also added 7% to 12% to our food
costs.
We knew we’d need funding to implement these standards and get them going. We originally asked for $25 per child for K-12. Now, that is equivalent to about $15 million. We ended up with the House appropriating $7.5 million. The Senate came back and appropriated only $800,000. And they are still debating how much money we will actually get.”