NYC Green Schools

Meatless Mondays is a campaign to have our children have more healthy food choices at lunch, but it’s also an environmental issue.  The most recent report on global warming and animal product consumption by the World Bank, Livestock and Climate Change: What if the Key Actors in Climate Change Are…Cows, Pigs and Chickens? released in November 2009, states that the production of animals and their products for food contributes 51% to global warming.  That’s more than all forms of transportation combined!  If we can stop 850,000 servings of meat once a week, we’ll be doing our part to make a difference.

Please join us in our campaign to have Meatless Mondays at all New York City schools. Form a nutrition committee, get in touch with your School Foods Manager, and with the permission of your principal, ask them to replace the meat dishes that are served with veggie burgers and bean burritos.  To get more details about how to do this, look under our category “How to Improve Your School’s Food.”  The more parents who take the initiative of enacting Meatless Mondays in their school, the better chance Scott Stringer has of making it a citywide policy.

Please join us on this very exciting campaign!

Saturday morning at 8:50 am watch Elizabeth speak about the Chancellor’s Regulation permitting Doritos and Pop-Tarts at NYC schools’ bake sales and fundraisers, but not home-baked goods on Fox’s news show Fox & Friends.

Although I was the lone voice on this issue and by 11:35p.m. only about 30 people were left in the auditorium that had been filled with hundreds a couple of hours before, the NY Times featured my position opposing the revisions to Regulation A-812 that I presented to the Panel for Educational Policy last night.

As many of you probably know by now the revisions to Regulation A-812 passed last night. We now have permission from the DOE to sell Doritos, Frito Lay Chips and Pop Tarts at our schools’ bake sales and fundraisers, but no home-baked muffins, bread or cupcakes.

I went to the PEP (Public Educational Panel) public meeting last night and at 11:35p.m. spoke for two minutes to voice my opposition and that of many other parents for approval of the revisions.   You can read my statement here and read more about the new Regulation below.

What impressed me most about the meeting was the turn out of parents with their children to fight for space for their children’s charter schools.  Hundreds of people were there.  The passion and commitment of the parents turning out with their children in the cold were an inspiration and example of how we as parents need to organize around the issues of food and sustainability in our schools to have our voices heard and enact change.  Even the students spoke out to the panel members to fight for what they believed in!

So let’s take up the challenge and mobilize in rejecting approval of the revisions to Reg A-812. Send us your ideas and comments about what we can do as parents to remind Chancellor Joel Klein and the DOE that they do not tell us what we feed our children, we tell them.

We’ve heard ideas about staging a “bake in” to show people the difference between packaged, processed foods and home-baked foods cooked with love for our children. Would the parents and principal of your school be interested in participating in such an event?  Let’s unite on this outrageous attempt by the DOE to force us to buy processed foods laden with additives and artificial preservatives under the guise of nutrition and fighting childhood obesity.

Think about it – the government won’t control people owning handguns to protect our children, but they will control what we as parents feed them?

Elizabeth & Anisa

The most important step you can take as a parent to improve the food at your school is to form a Wellness Committee with other parents at your school who feel as passionately about the issue as you do and who want to be catalysts for change.  Below are some brief guidelines for how to get started.  We will be supplementing these guidelines with more detailed information in the weeks ahead.

Form a Wellness Committee at Your School

Form a Wellness Committee with other parents at your school.  If your school shares a building and cafeteria with another school, than approach their PA/PTA and see if parents at their school would be interested in joining your committee.  You will not be able to implement any changes unless all the schools in your building are on board.  Commit to monthly meetings.

Come Up With a List of Changes/Goals for Your Cafeteria

Make sure everyone is on the same page as far as the kinds of changes you wish to see.  Some schools have sent questionnaires home in the kids’ backpacks to get feedback from as many parents as possible about changes they’d like to see from Meatless Mondays to getting rid of the chocolate milk loaded with high-fructose corn syrup.

Meet with Your SchoolFood Manager

Each school is assigned its own SchoolFood Manager.  Some Managers have mutiple schools to manage.  The job of your SchoolFood Manager is to accommodate the requests of parents as much as possible.  Speak with your SchoolFood Manager about your concerns and changes you’d like to see to the menu.  Contact your SchoolFood Regional Director (below) to get the name and contact information of your SchoolFood Manager.

SchoolFood Regional Director Contact Information:

Manhattan: (917) 339-1744 sobrien@schools.nyc.gov

Bronx: (718) 741-8815 lmizrahi@schools.nyc.gov

Brooklyn I: (718) 935-3411 mfigueroa@schools.nyc.gov

(Community School Districts 13, 14, 16, 19, 23, and 32)

Brooklyn II/Staten Island: (718) 714-0386 vtammaro@schools.nyc.gov

(Community School Districts 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, and 31)

Queens: 718 391- 6883 tcashin@schools.nyc.gov

Invite Your Manager and Kitchen Supervisor to Monthly Meetings of the Wellness Committee

Make sure your manager and kitchen supervisor are available on the day you have your meetings, and have part of the meeting be a time where you can review the progress of the agreed upon changes together.

If Your SchoolFood Manager is Not Being Cooperative

If Your SchoolFood Manager is not being cooperative about the changes you want to see and you know other schools which are already enjoying those changes, let them know that.  Once a precedence has been set at another school, your SchoolFood Manager cannot say no to you, unless it’s impossible for them to meet your request.  For example, if you want Meatless Mondays at your school, tell them you know The Children’s Workshop School and the East Village Community School are enjoying Meatless Mondays and that you want to join them.

If you’re still meeting with resistance, contact your SchoolFood Regional Director (above).

Invite NYC Green Schools to a Meeting

A member of NYC Green Schools would be happy to attend a Wellness Committee meeting at your school to help guide you through the process and let you know what’s worked at other schools.  Email us if you’re interested in having us speak with parents at your school about the truth of the food in our schools and what parents can do to improve it.

Be Patient

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and this process requires time, effort and a big dose of empathy.  We all want tastier, healthier meals for our children, whether we are parents or lunch ladies – but changes can be disruptive, and the Office of SchoolFoods is serving nearly 1 million meals a day.  Change might not be fast, but it is possible!  With persistence, you will get the changes you want.