Save our salad bars!
Nestwife, a tireless advocate for better food in our schools, has posted a video of students at Balboa High School enjoying their salad bar on YouTube. On the sfschools list she's asking everyone interested in better food for our schools to contact the BOE and Superintendent to request that both Student Nutrition Services (SNS) proposals for Prop H money (otherwise known as the Public Education Enrichment Fund) be funded – Point of Sale (POS) swipe card system and expansion of salad bars. Both proposals can be found here. The SNS proposals are #9 and #10. Nestwife goes on to say:
I have written in the past about the fact that 26% more students per day are eating the cafeteria lunch at Balboa now that it has a salad bar. Now we are seeing that this is not a unique situation, and schools all across the district are seeing similar or even greater increases in the number of students eating the cafeteria lunches with the opening of the salad bar. If we had a POS system, all of this data would be current as of yesterday. Unfortunately, we don’t have a POS, and so all data must be entered into the system manually; thus the most recent month for which this manual data has been completed is November. The average increase is 16%, but some schools have seen huge jumps in the numbers of students eating lunch in the cafeteria, for example:John Yehall Chin ES – up 29.4%More students eating in the cafeteria means more revenue for SNS, resulting in lowered deficit and less encroachment on the general fund. This in turn frees up more general fund money to pay for other school expenses which may be taking hits from the Governor’s proposed education budget cuts. As students love the salad bar and are turning out in record numbers to eat there, opening more salad bars not only addresses the most common demands from students for more fresh, nutritious food in their school lunch but also helps drive down the department deficit – a win-win!
Francisco MS – up 30.3%
Horace Mann MS – up 59%
Presidio MS – up 22.7%
Excelsior MS/June Jordan HS (shared cafeteria) – up 29.3%
Thurgood Marshall HS – up 58.6%
Please write to the Board of Education and the Superintendent before January 17th and ask them to provide funding for the salad bar proposal as part of Prop H spending. Email addresses are here. Thanks on behalf of all of our students!
Labels: Nutrition, SFUSD Politics
3 Comments:
For those who don't have time to put together a full-fledged communication, even one line urging the Board of Ed to vote to fund BOTH the Point of Sale system and the salad bars, and linking to the blog item, would be fantastic.
Our children thank you -- especially those children who live in neighborhoods with lots of liquor stores and scarce produce markets!
Did I hear ONE student stating The Salad Bar was "gross and no one uses it?" What school does he/she attend?
Lots of students use the one at Balboa, as far as I know. The Salad Bar offers a nutritional alternative to the the regular caf or beanery foods, so it gives our kids Choices!
This is a Big Plus for those schools that are closed campuses. Instead of bringing bland sandwiches everyday, they have healthy and nutritional choices.
Parents love this idea and I hope the Board will abide by their previous recommendation to use the 1/3 of the Prop H money to continue funding the salad bars!
I went to look at some SFUSD salad bars at lunchtime after hearing about that student's comment. The ones I saw were appealing, with fresh green lettuce and colorful, crisp-looking vegetables. At Newcomer High School and A.P. Giannini Middle School, many students were serving themselves salad or filling their containers with a favorite vegetable from the salad bar -- cherry tomatoes looked like the favorite, with lots taking carrots and jicama. Students all around the cafeterias were happily eating their salads.
I don't know what school the student who made the "gross" comment attends, but if she's right, it's really different from what I saw at Newcomer and Giannini.
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