GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

It isn’t only Common Core-aligned curriculum materials that have large school districts harnessing their purchasing power. They’re also working together to curb rising food costs.

New York City is one of six large districts to join in a new partnership called the Urban School Food Alliance, announced today. The districts will work together to buy some ingredients in bulk to cut costs and make serving healthy food an affordable option.

New York City spent $114 million in the 2009-2010 school year. When Comptroller John Liu scrutinized the spending, he found that the department was paying more than the real cost for 76 kinds of foods, including vegetables and herbs. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott with students in the garden at Brooklyn's P.S. 295, which is participating in the "Garden to Cafe" program, on the first day of school.

The Department of Education has done an admirable job of adding more healthy school lunch options. But more changes — and faster ones — are needed to keep children healthy, according to two City Council members who are sponsoring a resolution to improve school food.

In the last few years, the Office of SchoolFood has added more vegetarian options and swapped out some ingredients for healthier alternatives.

But Brad Lander and Gale Brewer, City Council members from Park Slope and the Upper West Side, think more could be done. “Despite these improvements, critics note that school meals still contain too many “processed” food items, such as breaded chicken nuggets, as well as foods that contain less healthy ingredients, including high fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring and saturated fats, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” says their resolution, which they are formally proposing today.

Lander and Brewer want the city to adopt recommendations made recently by the Brooklyn Food Coalition, a group of food and food justice organizations. Among other things, they want 10 percent of food served in schools to be produced locally and schools to go meatless at least one day a week.

They also want the city to be required to publish ingredient lists for food served in schools — something that the department has not always done. When nutrition facts were inadvertently published in 2010, they showed that some food served in cafeterias did not meet the city’s own nutrition guidelines for school bake sale snacks. (more…)

What you can no longer find on the DOE's website: nutritional information, including sugar content, on the chocolate milk served in city school cafeterias. This screen shot was taken earlier today, before the site was blocked.

The ingredients inside the city’s school cafeteria food are once again a mystery.

Hours after GothamSchools published a link to a list of school cafeteria food ingredients today, the city removed it, claiming that the list was never meant to be public.

The fact that the public could briefly bypass a city firewall to reach a nutritional directory was first reported today by GothamSchools Community section contributor Elizabeth Puccini and WE ACT for Environmental Justice’s James Subudhi. (Puccini previously posted the link on the site of NYC Green Schools, a group she founded.) The directory revealed that some food served in cafeterias does not meet the city’s own nutrition guidelines it set last year for bake sale snacks.

The directory included ingredient lists and nutritional information for more than 300 items served in public school cafeterias. The link now directs to a message that reads, “The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said the directory was an internal link to a website the city is building that will eventually publish nutrition information, but that it will not release the information it has already collected now.

“There is no list and never was,” Feinberg said. “We are creating one.” (more…)

City Councilman Brad Lander speaks at a rally today to oppose school lunch cuts. (Courtesy: Lander's office)

Last month, city officials announced a plan to save $3 million by reducing the number of students receiving free lunch next year. Today, elected officials and child advocates struck back from the steps of City Hall.

The group was arguing that the city’s plan to end the practice at some schools of providing free lunch to all students, not just those who fill out forms proving their need, could force some hungry students go unfed.

“For many low-income kids, universal free lunches are depended-upon meals,” Councilwoman Letitia James said in a statement. “We all know that children need nutrients and nourishment to best process information throughout the day. Cutting universal free lunches would, in effect, be impairing children’s ability to learn. This is not an acceptable proposal.”

The city has said it expects to save $24 million in total by changing its school lunch program. Other changes include reducing the number of hot options at all schools and cutting 276 food service employees. (more…)