Education Support Professionals (ESPs) know firsthand that our country is facing a crisis of childhood obesity, even while many children are going hungry. Hungry students do not learn well. Obese students are more likely to be bullied. But luckily, there are solutions to these problems. It is estimated that students in grades K-12 receive 30-50 percent of their daily calories at school, making schools ideal places where students can be well-fed, learn about food and nutrition, and develop healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime.
There are many excellent school district food service programs, but many others could do a much better job of meeting the students’ needs, including those school districts facing challenges implementing new school meal rules required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Struggling food service programs are not serving students as well as they should, and the financial losses that many of them incur can lead school administrators and school boards to look to privatization, in the (often mistaken) belief that outsourcing will relieve their administrative and financial headaches.
The National Education Association believes there is a better way: by involving food service Education Support Professionals, other ESPs and teachers, parents, and community members, schools can improve school meals, create financial sustainability, and help students learn healthy approaches to food.
The nearly half-million ESPs who are members of the National Education Association play vital roles in educating and caring for our students. ESPs work as bus drivers, custodians, secretaries, classroom paraeducators, and in many other jobs as part of a unified education workforce that helps ensure that children are safe, healthy, well-nourished, and well-educated.
The best practices for financial and nutritional success in school food service can be divided into four related areas. Here are a few examples of how ESPs can help lead efforts in each of these areas:
- Goal: Achieve high participation rates for school breakfast and lunch – especially in districts with a high number of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals
- Involve food service staff, custodians, paraeducators and teachers as partners in planning and implementing universal breakfast in the classroom programs
- Implement student payment and verification practices, such as cashless debit cards that don’t differentiate between paid and free or reduced-price students, which eliminate sources of stigma for students receiving free or reduced-price meals
- Goal: More efficient purchasing
- Engage food service staff in identifying and eliminating purchasing and inventory inefficiencies
- Goal: More efficient production of high-quality meals
- Identify professional development needs, and train food service ESPs in preparation and presentation of high-quality, scratch-cooked meals
- Involve food service ESPs in identifying and eliminating production inefficiencies (e.g. placing whole apples in individual serving cups)
- Goal: Promote student acceptance of and desire for new foods, minimize tray waste, integrate food service with student learning, and create family and community support for the food service program
- Use ESPs’ community connections to help develop farm to school programs, and to build parent and community involvement with the food service program
- Involve food service and classroom ESPs in connecting the cafeteria with the curriculum
- Involve all ESPs, including custodians and groundskeepers, in developing school gardens
These are just a few examples. If you’re an NEA member and are interested in learning more about how your school can get involved or if you have an idea to share, contact me at [email protected].
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