Another School District Declares its Independence from Federal School Guidelines

A school decides what's good and what's bad, not the federal government.

The Catlin (IL) school district doesn't want the money from the Federal Government for its lunch program.  From Catlin leaving federal school lunch program:

"We did some studies that showed it would take us about 83 days into the year to make up what we were being reimbursed from the federal government," Lewis said, adding the food service program lost money over the last three years. "We don't want to make money on it, but we want to break even, which will be a big plus."

Not only will the district save money, it will retain control of what type of food its students will be offered:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which sets federal nutritional standards for school lunches, revised meal guidelines for government-subsidized school meals, in an effort to address childhood obesity.

Under the new rules, which are still being phased in, participating schools must serve more whole-grain products, double the amount of fruits and veggies, serve more dry beans and peas and serve low-fat or fat-free milk and other dairy products, among other things. They also must limit the amount of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in food.

"We had to not only offer vegetables but vegetables of a certain color, and we had to offer them so many times a week," Lewis said, adding it was difficult to meet the guidelines with selections the kids would eat. "I will eat kale. But if I tried to get my 11- and 7-year-old to eat kale, they will look at me like, 'What are you putting on my plate?'

This principal should be given a ribbon for food conservation as well.  Why pay for food that the students will not eat but the school is mandated to serve via Federal guidelines?  

School officials decided to pull out of the National School Lunch Program earlier this spring, after seeing a decline in the number of meals that were served and too much food going into the garbage last year.

Read more here.

Imagine that.  A school district making decisions for its students based on students' needs, rather than a centralized plan from this administration on what, how much and even what color the food needed to be in school.  Now only if districts would make the same decision on Common Core...wouldn't that be a glorious day when a school could/would determine how and what their students needed to learn instead of centralized consortia propped up by private organizations and federal stimulus money and federal guidelines?

Here is a story earlier this year about another school who pulled away from adhering to the federal lunch guidelines.


Remember this video from Kansas about school lunches?  Who would have thought schools would need to declare their independence from the Federal Government by supplying its own food to its students?