No
Junk Food Fundraising Policy
Valley
City Public Schools (VCPS) in
All food
fundraising on campus, for sale or consumption within the instructional day,
will be expected to follow the district nutrition standards. VCPS encourage fundraising projects without
selling food items. If food items are to
be sold off campus, fundraising projects are encouraged to follow the district
nutrition standards. If meat is sold as
an entrée, there should be no more than 5 grams of fat per ounce.
Prior
to enactment of this Healthy School Nutrition Policy, any and all foods could
be sold on or off campus for fundraising, including candy bars, soda pop, etc.
As
part of the policy, each group that plans to sell food items, must be
‘certified’ to do so on an annual basis.
Certification is accomplished by reading the policy and guaranteeing
compliance by the group by signing it. A
list of ‘certified’ groups is kept in the VCPS central office.
The
intended outcomes of this policy are to have few, if any, food-related
fundraisers and those that do occur would sell only healthy food products, for
VCPS to set a good example by practicing what it preaches about good nutrition,
and to decrease the consumption of high fat-high calorie junk foods.
Policy Initiation
Two
major things influenced the development of this policy. One was the problems associated with poor
nutrition among youth and the second was the involvement of a key school board
member in a national training on nutrition in schools.
Nutrition
Problems of Youth
In
Participation
in National Training
A
key member of the school board is a licensed registered dietician and director
of the Young People’s Healthy Heart Program.
She attended a national conference in 2002 on a healthy school nutrition
environment. She took material from that
conference (including the TEAM Nutrition/Changing the Scene packet) to the
superintendent and requested that VCPS Nutrition Team be established. The Team met during 2003 and 2004 and did an
assessment of the nutrition situation in the District. Among their finding was the common use of
junk food for fundraisings. The Team
then set up a subcommittee to address healthier options for fundraisers.
Public Health Agency Roles
The
local public health department had a number of their staff on the Nutrition
Team that discussed the issues and made decisions. The North Dakota State Health Department offered
Team Nutrition grants to schools and VCPS was awarded $3,000 for the 2003-2004
school year which was critical to the success of the project.
Major Partners
The
major partners included the VCPS and the Young People’s Healthy Heart Program
as noted above. In addition,
Official Support
Key
supporters for the effort included the superintendent, the school principals,
and the school food service director.
Results from the Policy
A
tracking form for fundraisers is being used.
Principals require fundraising organizations to complete it and provide
a copy to the food service director.
It
should be noted that the policy says organizations are ‘encouraged’ to not sell
food items and ‘encouraged’ to follow the district nutrition standard when they
do. There is a continuing effort to
monitor and market the policy and to help staff, parents and students accept
and follow it.
90%
of products sold this past year met the standard.
A
Coordinated School Health Grant for 2004-2005 allowed for continued
implementation of the policy.
Opposition
There
was some opposition to the project from principals and some are yet to be
convinced a change should have been made.
Opposition came in the form of questioning by those who had
concerns. Concerns raised include:
·
Placing
limitation of products sold for fundraising.
·
Dictating to
teachers what food products they could allow and serve.
·
Whether pop
machines in teacher’s lounges would be turned off during the day.
·
Whether teachers
could drink pop in the lounge during the day since students could not.
Opposition
was dealt with by compromise (e.g., allowing pop machines to stay in the
teacher lounges but not allowing teachers to take pop outside the lounge).
Most
everyone in the school system had some degree of opposition to the
changes. The strongest advocates for the
changes were parents and the health professional community.
Lessons Learned
Lessons
learned from enactment of this policy include:
·
It is essential that
both the administration and teachers believe in the suggested changes to
policy.
·
There has to be
good planning.
·
It has to be
recognized that change takes time.
·
It took a key
leader/policy maker coupled with data and willing group of parents, students,
teachers, administrators and community supporters to get the project off the
ground.
Submitted By
Sharon
E. Buhr
c/o Mercy Hospital
570 Chautauqua Blvd.
701-845-6456
(Fax)
701-845-6413