The Problem:

In the fall of 2002, cafeterias in San Francisco middle schools and high schools had à la carte cafes called “beaneries.” These cafes offered students a wide array of junk food for lunch; there were no healthy options. Students could choose between hot dogs, hot wings, hot links, giant pizzas and cheeseburgers, chips, and snack cakes. Vending machines on campus offered only soda. The principal at Aptos noticed that students would often eat only chips and a soda for lunch.

Making a Change:

The principal at Aptos was concerned about the lunch situation at her school. After a district administrator refused to help try to integrate healthier foods into the menu, the principal mentioned the problem to Dana, who was already very involved at the school. She offered to look into the situation. The main objections to offering healthier food seemed to be bureaucratic inertia and a fear that Student Nutrition Services (SNS) would lose a lot of money if it stopped selling the soda and junk food everyone assumed kids wanted.

Dana went straight to the top. In October she approached Superintendent Ackerman at a public event and asked if the superintendent would support a pilot program that would bring healthy food options to Aptos for the rest of the school year. She promised to carefully track profits and losses so the district would know for the future how healthy options would affect its budget. The superintendent’s support made it more difficult for other administrators to try to stall the project.

Next, Dana pulled together a group of interested parents and got to work. By December, the Board of Education had approved the plan for Aptos and the new menu debuted in January. The parent group surveyed students about what types of healthier food they’d like. Dana worked with the district SNS employee in charge of Aptos to ensure that no “empty” calories, including those in baked chips, were served in the beanery. Deli sandwiches loaded with veggies, salads, homemade soups, and baked chicken with rice replaced candy bars and giant cheeseburgers. The Coca Cola vendor replaced sodas with bottled water, 100% fruit juice, and nonfat milk. Cafeteria profits went up and up and up. At the end of the school year, Aptos had made a profit of $6,000, one of only three school cafeterias in the district to finish the year in the black.

Getting Other Parents Involved:

It wasn’t hard to get parents to support this effort. Dana started a school nutrition committee that met as an email group. She recognized that no one needed an extra meeting to go to, and virtual “meetings” offered busy parents the chance to participate on their own time. Almost all of the committee’s decision-making happened online, including assigning tasks, voting, and tracking the project’s success.

Working With the School:

The school food campaign started with the principal, so the school was solidly behind the effort. A few teachers were initially concerned about taking away the kids’ “freedom to choose” their food, but Dana quickly pointed out that the junk food industry was spending 30 billion dollars a year persuading kids to eat junk. She helped the teachers understand that kids need some guidance to counteract that influence.

Major Challenges: