In an email to Brown dated June 22, newly-confirmed schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson says the decision to remove chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk from schools was part of an ongoing effort to make school food healthier, that the sugar in flavored milk puts many students at risk of obesity and heart disease, and that not serving more expensive flavored milk frees money that can be used to improve the the quality of meals served.

During recent confirmation hearings before the council, Brown tried to get Henderson to commit to bringing flavored milk back to city lunch lines based on findings of a 7-year-old student at Lafayette Elementary School that 58 percent of his school mates do not drink milk. “Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate,” Brown said. The boy questioned why chocolate milk had been removed when schools continue to serve fruit juice that contains as much sugar as flavored milk, but not the protein.

In her email to Brown, Henderson noted that Los Angeles schools, the second-largest school district in the country, recently opted to remove chocolate milk and that other school districts appear poised to do so as well. As for juice, Henderson said the sugar in fruit juice occurs naturally, unlike that added to flavored milk, and that juice is only served once per week in D.C. schools as a replacement for whole fruit.

A debate over the chocolate milk issue played out recently in Washington Post reporter Mike DeBonis’ column after I broke the news in this blog about Kwame Brown’s interrogation of Henderson. The father of the Lafayette Elementary student, Chris Murphy, wrote DeBonis insisting that his son “is not a dairy lobbyist.” But a copy of the boy’s testimony has since been widely circulated by the National Dairy Council as evidence that kids prefer chocolate milk to plain milk and risk not getting enough calcium to build healthy bones without it.

Chocolate milk has become a flash-point issue in the battle to improve the quality of food served in the nation’s schools. The dairy industry spends tens of millions of dollars promoting chocolate milk as an alternative to soda and other soft drinks. While sales of plain milk have plummeted in recent decades , sales of flavored milk have tripled. But some health experts have become concerned about chocolate milk’s roll in promoting children’s consumption of sugar and say that kids can get the calcium they need from a range of other foods.

My reporting of D.C. school food indicated that as recently as a year ago, children were being offered the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar with breakfasts in which chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk were served alongside Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, Otis Spunkmeyer and fruit juice. Under the aggressive approach taken by food services Director Jeffrey Mills, schools have removed not only flavored milk, but also sugary cereals and processed foods.

Henderson says the response to D.C. schools removing flavored milk “has been positive.”

Here is the full text of Henderson’s email to Brown:

Chairman Brown–

In response to the discussion that arose during my confirmation hearing, I would like to share information with you about our decision to eliminate flavored milk from our menus. 

The decision to stop serving flavored milk in DC Public Schools (DCPS) was made in support of our goal to serve healthy, natural foods to our students that are additive, artificial flavoring and coloring-free.  This change was implemented, beginning last summer, in conjunction with new DCPS nutrition standards.  Our new standards require that all menu items and competitive foods comply with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) standards, the federal HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold Standard, and with our own district-specific standards which regulate/restrict sugar content in our meals. 

Flavored milk contains significantly higher amounts of sugar and sodium than plain milk.   An 8-ounce carton of flavored milk contains 14 grams (approximately 3 ½ teaspoons and 64 calories) of added sugar per serving.   The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of an individual’s discretionary calories come from added sugar.   For young girls ages 9-13, for example, 8 ounces of flavored milk would constitute nearly a whole day’s added sugar allowance.  Considering the fact that DCPS offers three meals a day, it is feasible that some students would choose to consume three cartons of flavored milk, thereby exceeding their recommended daily sugar intake by 128 calories.   Other American Heart Association research cautions that the average child consume over 20 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, a habit that undoubtedly contributes to heart disease and obesity-related illnesses.  

To the point that some have made about the amount of sugar in fruit juices, we mention that the sugar in juice occurs naturally, that all of the juice we serve is 100% juice, and we only serve it once per week as a replacement for fruit.   Additionally, the amount of protein in milk does not vary between flavored and unflavored; some milk products have added milk solids (protein), but this additive is not unique to flavored milk. 

DCPS currently serves only skim or 1% plain milk.   Despite removing flavored milk and making significant menu changes, we are on track to serve nearly 2.5 million more meals this school year than last, meaning 2.5 million more milks have been purchased.  Flavored milk also costs approximately $.05 more per carton than plain milk; and so, the additional volume comes at a cost savings to the District, allowing us to funnel more resources into buying more high-quality, healthy foods for our children. 

Our Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) has been tracking district policies around flavored milk across the country.  Just last week, Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, stopped serving flavored milk, and according to indications within the school food service community, many other districts are planning to pull it in the coming school year. 

While we do not take lightly the advocacy of our students, we also know that the District ranks 9th among all states with high overweight and obesity rates among adolescents ages 10-17 (DC DOH 2010 Obesity Report).  It is also important to note that the majority of feedback we have received from the DCPS community regarding the decision to eliminate flavored milk has been positive.  Spurred in part by the Council’s own nationally-recognized Healthy Schools Act legislation, we at DCPS have been working aggressively to develop nutritional health and fitness initiatives and approaches to help combat this challenge.  Through this and other changes, DCPS hopes to give students the gift of a healthy palate and an active mind.  

Sincerely,

Kaya Henderson

Milk: It does a body sort-of good.Photo: a little tune

Brown made the remarks in an animated exchange last week with Kaya Henderson during hearings to consider her confirmation as schools chancellor. Brown said he was impressed by the nutritional information on flavored milk the first-grader had amassed, but more likely, Brown was tagged by the long arm of the dairy industry, which relentlessly pursues efforts to keep flavored milk in schools to offset decades of decline in sales of plain milk. As one of a few major school districts to ditch chocolate milk, the District of Columbia has become a crown jewel for activists aiming to topple flavored milk’s rule in the nation’s lunchrooms. Brown parroted the dairy industry line that kids won’t drink milk unless it’s tarted up with sugar, and will collapse in a heap of osteoporosis and rickets without it.

So how does a 6-year-old dictate school food policy in the nation’s capital? Here’s the transcript from last Thursday’s hearing:

Brown: This is from our youth hearing, a first-grader, and he made sense. And I want him to know to get his question in. We have the Healthy Schools Act. And we all know we want everyone to eat healthy. And I’m all supportive of that. But he had a survey of about I think 100 and something students that he had spoken with and I did my own independent survey of a couple of graduation ceremonies I attended and I come to find out that most students agree. They want to know why they can’t have chocolate milk in the schools. They said they’re getting juices that have more sugar than chocolate milk that has protein and less sugar. And their question to you was to say that it’s not because it’s not part of the Healthy [Schools] Act but because the schools just don’t offer it. And it’s wrong that the schools don’t give them a choice to have chocolate milk anymore. And I want to know can you commit to make sure that we have chocolate milk back in our elementary schools. Because they made an argument that it has protein and calcium and is better than some of the juices they’re getting inside the school now.

Henderson: I got a call from the milk producers of America telling me that research effectively says that if kids don’t drink chocolate milk, they won’t drink milk. I’m happy to work with my food services department on it.

Brown: So we’re going to get chocolate milk back into schools?

Henderson: I will work on it. I mean, here’s the thing, right? We didn’t make that decision lightly. There was a reason.

Brown: I know. I’m not saying …

Henderson: I’m willing to reopen the conversation about chocolate milk.

Brown: We reopened it already. You called and you talked to the milk people and …

Henderson: The milk people called me. That’s the lobbying people [laughs].

Brown: The first-grader came and he did the study and it said that most kids aren’t drinking milk at all now. They’re drinking more juices with more sugar and they’re more inclined at a young age to drink chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’ll talk to my people. Our priority is to have our kids drinking milk.

Brown: Chocolate milk?

Henderson: Why do you all try to get me to get up here and …

Brown: This is an interview, right? We asked you a question and we want to know what you’re committing to.

Henderson: Until I talk to my food service experts, I can’t make that commitment.

Brown: Is anyone here from …

Henderson: No, food services is not here.

Brown: Chocolate milk. Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate. We want our youth to know when they come to testify, they sit all day long, and he put an incredible amount of work into some of this research and I went to two elementary schools and spoke at their promotional exercises — graduations — and I asked them about chocolate milk and, yes, they want chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’m on it Mr. Chairman.

Brown: Thank you.

Brown’s remarks came as members of the school board in Los Angeles — the nation’s second-largest school district — were voting to eliminate chocolate, strawberry, and other flavored milk as part of that city’s battle against childhood obesity. Schools in Berkeley, Boulder, Minneapolis, and elsewhere also have sworn off flavored milk because of the added sugar it contains. D.C. school officials made the move with little fanfare nearly a year ago after appointing a new food services director who has aggressively redesigned the menu, removing many of the processed and sugary items that had been served daily to the district’s 45,000 students. Nearby Fairfax County, Va., also removed chocolate milk, but then reinstated it to quell protests.

A report by the Institute of Medicine last year found that most Americans do not lack calcium or Vitamin D, refuting claims by the dairy industry that children suffer from a “calcium crisis.” School food guru Ann Cooper, who refers to flavored milk as “soda in drag,” recently said, “we don’t have a calcium crisis, we have an obesity crisis.” In fact, kids in D.C. rank eighth in the nation for being overweight or obese.

The average eight-ounce carton of chocolate milk contains 14 grams — or 3.5 teaspoons — of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The American Heart Association has warned that children on average now consume an astonishing 21 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, and as a result exhibit common markers for heart disease, such as low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, and high LDL cholesterol. Robert Ludwig, an expert in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar “poison” because of its link to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease risk. Ludwig cites a worldwide epidemic of obese infants and fatty liver disorder in children.

No less an authority than Walter Willet, head of the nutrition department at Harvard University, has warned that children should not be served flavored milk in school and that milk itself “is not an essential nutrient.”

As for sugar in fruit juices, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times last week USDA guidelines [PDF] for school meals would sharply curtail schools’ ability to substitute  juice for whole fruit.

Milk is not categorized as a protein in the federally subsidized school meals program. Because of the dairy industry’s special relationship with the USDA, milk comprises its own food group and must be offered with all meals. Protein in school meals comes from other designated sources, such as meat, poultry, and fish. Most schools elect to offer milk as an optional meal selection, but D.C. Public Schools officials, in an effort to speed up food lines, this year required all elementary school students to take milk with their meals. The schools have not released data indicating how much milk children are drinking.

The dairy industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting chocolate milk while trying to scare parents, politicians, and food service directors into believing that children won’t grow healthy bones if they do not have access to milk with added sugar and flavorings. The slick industry campaign, including a “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” promotion, pays for “studies” that bolster the industry cause, then dresses them up with statements cherry-picked from various health and medical groups to create an impression of widespread approval for kids drinking sugary milk products as much as they like.

Dairy interests have vigorously promoted one “study” in particular purporting to show that milk consumption plummets when flavored milk is removed from school. But that was the product of a marketing research firm hired by the Milk Processors Education Program, which refuses to make the “study” available for public inspection.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been monitoring what kids in the nation’s capital eat in the cafeteria every day and I can attest that they still drink plain milk. Sure, they’d drink more if it were chocolate or strawberry. But we already know kids love sugar. They’d eat lollipops instead of lunch if we let them. Only a year ago, they were pouring strawberry milk over Apple Jacks cereal as part of a breakfast that included Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. Kids as young as 5 were regularly being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started. All that is gone in favor of plain milk, cereal containing no more than five grams of sugar, string cheese, and yogurt.

Still, just in the last week I saw children at my daughter’s elementary school unpacking bottles of Sprite and Pepsi and containers of Kool Aid from lunch boxes they brought from home. I’ve seen kids eat bags of home-brought Oreo cookies, giant cupcakes, huge Hershey’s chocolate bars, and packages of Skittles. I recently witnessed one high-schooler make a lunch out of a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of Lifesaver candies.

Conducting my own unscientific survey for this article, I asked my 11-year-old daughter for her opinion. She said all schools should be made of chocolate and jelly beans, security guards should be replaced with giant Gummi Bears, and classes should be held at the Dave & Buster’s arcade at the White Flint Mall. Her 9-year-old cousin, meanwhile, said half of all school hours should be spent in recess, the other half at lunch.

Schools are not free choice zones. Last we checked, adults — not children — were still responsible for making important policy decisions involving curricula, teacher hiring, standards, and a host of other vital school issues — including nutrition and meal service. Local elected leaders are expected to act like grownups and look out for the welfare of minors, not pander to 6-year-olds and the dairy lobby.

What’s the price of healthier school food?Photo: Ed Bruske

The GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee recently attached language to a funding measure for agriculture programs directing the USDA to rewrite the proposed school meal guidelines so that they do not create any additional costs. The USDA has estimated that the proposed guidelines as currently written [PDF], calling for much larger servings of vegetables and whole grains and less salt, would require schools to cook more food from scratch and would raise the cost of a subsidized lunch by 15 cents, breakfast by more than 50 cents. The result would be some $7 billion in additional expenses over five years, to be paid mostly by state and local governments that are still reeling from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But the USDA believes the appropriations language cannot undo the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act approved by Congress last December, which mandated new meal guidelines. The guidelines were the result of years-long study by the Institute of Medicine. USDA officials consider them to be “science based,” and do not intend to rewrite them in response to what they see as an arbitrary and perhaps politically motivated move by conservative lawmakers.

The proposed guidelines recently underwent a public comment period that generated some 130,000 responses. The USDA in coming months may modify the guidelines. They could be in place as early as fall 2012.

In passing its reauthorization of the school meals program, Congress approved a six-cent hike in the federal reimbursement rate for lunch, but only for schools that comply with the new guidelines. The USDA currently provides schools with $2.72 for every student who qualifies for a free lunch. About 32 million of the nation’s children participate in the subsidized lunch program daily.

In fact, the House directive aimed at meal guidelines was not contained in the appropriations bill, but rather in the committee’s report [PDF] on the bill. The report, which serves as an explanatory text, travels with the bill through the legislative process. In some cases, such committee reports contain language giving specific directions to government agencies. Agencies of the executive branch may follow Congress’ wishes. But such directives do not carry the full force of the law and in this case the USDA would choose to ignore what GOP House members have demanded.

The report states: “The Committee urges restraint and practical timeliness for implementing new national nutrition standards in the school breakfast and lunch programs. As many of the representatives in states and local school districts have cautioned, an overly aggressive implementation schedule and unrealistic demands on changes in nutrient content can lead to burdensome costs, estimated to be about $7 billion over five years. Therefore, the Committee directs [USDA Food and Nutrition Services] to issue a new proposed rule that would not require an increase in the cost of providing school meals.”

The language was expected to be approved by the full House when it takes up the agriculture appropriations measure, but is not likely to survive reconciliation with the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Institute of Medicine panel that wrote the proposed guidelines cautioned that there was no guarantee children would actually eat the “healthier” foods the USDA is calling for. School food service directors have urged that the new requirements be pilot-tested on a small scale before being mandated nationwide. Some have said they may have to drop their breakfast program because of additional food costs.

The GOP House appropriation for agriculture programs has also drawn fire from the Obama administration and the advocacy community for rolling back spending on food entitlement programs such as WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and others serving seniors. It would also curtail funds for food safety inspections.

The action on school meal guidelines was probably intended more as a political message for consumption by the party’s conservative base. Cost-cutting has become the GOP mantra. It also favors corporate food interests, which would just as soon see meal guidelines unchanged and schools reliant on cheap processed products, rather than the kind of whole foods the new guidelines call for.

Nevertheless, the appropriations committee directive has caused much hand-wringing among advocates of healthier school food. Media accounts thus far have failed to adequately explain the actual impact of the committee action, and the USDA has remained silent.

Scene from Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Drawing by George Cruikshank, circa 1837.

Schools that now charge only $1.50 for lunch would, over time, have to increase the price to at least match the federal contribution for a fully-subsidized meal — currently $2.72 — according to a provision in Congress’ recent reauthorization of the federally-subsidized school meals program.

The mandate for higher prices passed virtually undetected as the public debate over the school food bill focused on the measly six-cent raise Congress gave the program and some $2.2 billion lawmakers borrowed from the food stamp program to pay for it.

The measure is aimed at children who do not qualify as low income and pay “full price” for school lunch. Some have hailed it as a potential boon for school kitchens. The USDA estimates it would, over 10 years, generate some $2.6 billion in additional revenue — assuming millions of kids don’t opt out of the program and start bringing food from home. (Would you pay full price for the food most schools serve?)

The current practice of giving a price break to kids deemed able to pay is seen as unfair because it drains money that should be supporting poor children. One prominent food writer even suggested that bands of rich kids — with “parents making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year” — were mooching cheap food in schools here in the nation’s capitol. D.C. school officials would certainly like to know who those children are, since families making that kind of money typically send their kids to one of the private schools that proliferate here. Participation in the meals program drops sharply with higher income and family education level.

School boards objected to the proposal, saying the federal government has no business telling local officials how to price school meals and that raising prices could exclude many children who don’t technically qualify as “low income,” but still can’t afford more expensive cafeteria food.

The cost of complying with new federal meal guidelines that call for more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, and less salt, may well force cash-strapped schools to raise the price of lunch and breakfast.

But what school districts are grappling with at the moment are too many students who don’t qualitfy for free lunch but who arrive at school without either a home-packed lunch or the money to pay up in the cafeteria. Typically, cafeteria workers let them eat, but record their unpaid dues as debt. In New York City, for instance, schools since 2004 have absorbed at least $42 million in unpaid lunch fees, and now principals are being told they must collect the money or have it docked from their budgets.

Of the city’s 1,600 schools, 1,043 owe a collective $2.5 million to the department for meals served in the first three months of this school year. That puts them on track to be $8 million behind by the end of the school year.

Under city rules, elementary and middle school students who are behind on payments but come to school without their own lunches must be fed the same meal as everyone else. High schools are not required to feed such students.

Similar stories are playing out in school districts across the country, reports the New York Times. In some cases, districts are imposing a kind of austerity on kids who can’t pay — and a kind of de facto stigma. Schools in Albuquerque have started serving cold sandwiches and milk, instead of full hot meals, to students whose parents fall behind on their bill. In Wake County, N.C., those students may eat as many fruits and vegetables as they want, but not the rest of the lunch offerings.

Framingham, Mass., hired a constable to collect money from parents, but the schools are still short $40,000. School officials make repeated phone calls to parents and send letters home, to no avail. “I struggle every day to recoup these funds — every day,” said Brendan Ryan, the school system’s food services director.

The School Nutrition Association (SNA), representing some 53,000 cafeteria workers across the country, reports that nearly 40 percent of its members saw an increase in unpaid meals in the last year.

School food advocates look to the federal government to pay for school meals. Instead, Congress, faced with its own budget crisis, is trying to pass the cost onto struggling state and local governments — and now onto parents unable to make ends meet.

A House version of the bill called for the price hikes to expire after 10 years and for the USDA to perform and impact assessment after four years. But in a frantic effort to pass the legislation before Congress adjourned last year, the Senate’s version imposing price hikes was adopted unchanged. The SNA says the feds need to take a second look and test the idea before forcing schools to raise prices nationwide. Given that an unemployment crisis seems to be settling in long-term, that seems a wise idea — if we accept the idea that every kid needs a decent lunch in order to learn properly.

Kids at an after-school program in Washington, D.C.Photo: Mark Fenton/Bread for the World

That’s the central question in the school-food debate. And judging from the proposed new guidelines [PDF] that the USDA has finally issued for the federally-subsidized school meals program, the answer is a depressing one.

The proposed guidelines are little changed from recommendations made by a panel of prominent nutritionists for the Institute of Medicine in October 2009, representing the first update to the guidelines since 1995. The USDA was under congressional orders to bring school meal standards into line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The standards are supposed to be updated every five years, so these have been a long time in the making — much longer than Michelle Obama has been waging her “Let’s Move” campaign to fight childhood obesity.

The IOM recommendations should make it somewhat easier for the nation’s lunch ladies to serve healthful meals: they lowered the calorie requirements at breakfast and lunch, increased the total amount of allowable fat, and cut back on starchy foods such as potatoes and corn that have been implicated in “metabolic syndrome,” a constellation of diet-related health problems including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease.

But the IOM, and the USDA, chose not to regulate the most dangerous ingredient of all: sugar.

In a major concession to the dairy industry, the USDA will continue to allow flavored milk in the nation’s public schools, although chocolate milk will have to be fat-free. In the government’s warped logic, this will bring down the total calorie count of a carton of chocolate (or strawberry, or grape, or root-beer-flavored) milk. But it does nothing to address the metabolic issues of sugar, which some experts have dubbed an “anti-nutrient” because of all the health problems it causes, such as the aforementioned “metabolic syndrome” and an unprecedented outbreak of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

Kids overwhelmingly choose flavored milk over plain, making it one of the few bright spots in the milk sales landscape, which otherwise has seen milk sales plummet over the years as kids embraced sugary soda and sports drinks. Dairy interests are vigorously promoting flavored milk in schools through their “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” campaign, endorsed also by the School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 of the nation’s school food service workers. An eight-ounce carton of strawberry milk contains nearly as much sugar, ounce-for-ounce, as Mountain Dew.

But now we get to the issue of whether good school food can really be legislated from Washington. The proposed meal standards, while calling for fewer potatoes, would require more servings of green and orange vegetables and whole grain products. These, of course, are adult ideas of what constitutes “healthy” food. In reality, kids adore potatoes of any kind — it’s their second-favorite food in the school meal line after pizza — and corn also ranks high on that list. Vegetables and whole grains are their least-favorite foods.

Since I visit the cafeteria in my daughter’s school on a daily basis, I can also add that school kitchens have a hard time preparing vegetables that are anywhere near palatable. Would you eat cooked-to-death broccoli? Well, neither will kids. Cooking vegetables on a large scale is extremely difficult. Consequently, most of the vegetables that are served at my daughter’s school simply get dumped in the trash. And that has been a problem the USDA has documented in schools nationwide for years.

As for “whole grain,” this really depends on what your definition is. Most of the whole-grain products we see on kids cafeteria trays consist of hamburger buns or dinner rolls that are merely formulated with some whole grain in them to meet the government standard. They are still loaded with refined grain that once again is implicated in that “metabolic syndrome.”

Bringing school meal regulations more in line with Dietary Guidelines for Americans does represent something of a breakthrough. The guideline for fat content in school meals has been kept artificially low at no more than 30 percent of calories, compared to 35 percent for the general population. As a result, cash-strapped schools use sugar as a cheap substitute for real food to bring the calorie count in meals up to USDA standards. Now the required calorie count would be reduced as well. The new guidelines for the first time set a minimum and a maximum calorie requirement, adjusted for children of different ages.

Along with those added vegetables and whole grains, the IOM panel figured sugar would be squeezed off school menus — with the exception of flavored milk, for which they made special allowances.

What we’ll probably see as a result of the new guidelines is food manufacturers reformulating their products or perhaps creating new ones. Most schools don’t serve fresh foods, but rather meals made from highly processed components that arrive frozen from manufacturers around the country, who frequently make their products specifically to conform with school meal requirements.

Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a key lobbyist on school food matters, recently told The Washington Post that judging the guidelines in terms of food quality, as opposed to health measures, is a “foodie” concern. But of course the quality of food does matter if you want kids to eat it, and if you’re trying to teach children the difference between real food and the junk they’re exposed to every day.

What Wootan and these guidelines fail to take into account is the growing belief that schools should not merely feed hungry children, but show them there’s another world of food besides the junk food culture they grow up in.

It’s not just a matter of putting calories in kids’ bellies, not when food insecurity and obesity exist side-by-side. This is really a question of social justice for our times. Do the disadvantaged children for whom the subsidized meal program is designed deserve the opportunity to eat the same quality food as children from families who can afford to shop at a farmers market?

Picture the difference between processed chicken nuggets (still allowed under the new guidelines) and cooked-to-death broccoli, versus a salad bar of fresh vegetables, fruits, and maybe chicken salad.

What the public and mainstream media have yet to grasp is that serving real food in school takes radical changes on the local level, not merely tinkering with standards originating in Washington. That means an attitude change and a commitment on the part of local school officials, parents, and elected leaders.

And it will also take more than Food ]]> schoolfood_breadfortheworld_flickr.jpg gristadmin After school meal program http://grist.org/article/food-2011-01-13-head-of-harvard-nutrition-unit-says-no-to-chocolate-milk/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed:edbruske http://grist.org/article/food-2011-01-13-head-of-harvard-nutrition-unit-says-no-to-chocolate-milk/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:49:42 +0000 http://www.grist.org/article/food-2011-01-13-head-of-harvard-nutrition-unit-says-no-to-chocolate-milk/ ]]> This is no way to start a kid’s day.Photo: Ed BruskeThe USDA requires that schools offer milk with breakfast and lunch. Given a choice, kids unsurprisingly and overwhelmingly prefer chocolate milk over plain. Estimates indicate that between 60 and 70 percent of the milk consumed in the school meals program is flavored.

Many children start their day with a government-sponsored breakfast consisting of strawberry-flavored milk containing nearly as much sugar ounce-for-ounce as Mountain Dew, poured over a bowl of Apple Jacks or other sugar-enhanced cereal. Until recently, kids as young as five in the District of Columbia routinely were being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started, and experts say that’s not at all uncommon in school districts around the country. Some are even worse.

The dairy industry thinks that’s no problem. But Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, disagrees.

“These highly sugared milks make absolutely no sense whatsoever,” Willet told me in an interview. “The use of sugar as an important part of the diet makes absolutely no sense nutritionally, especially when obesity is the No. 1 health problem facing our nation.”

Willett says the nation’s schools should not be serving sugary chocolate milk to children and that too many refined, starchy foods in the federally-subsidized school meals program pose a risk of obesity and other weight-related illness. Willett and Harvard colleagues recently went public with findings exonerating fat and blaming sugar and too many starchy carbohydrates — such as those found in bread, pasta, and potatoes — for many of the nation’s health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.

“People are getting 50 percent of their calories from carbs, and 80 percent of those calories are from refined starch and sugar,” Willett said. “Kids in school are getting the full brunt of that diet.”

Willett, who has not spoken out publicly on the school-food issue previously, is joining a growing chorus of prestigious critics questioning the routine use of flavored milks and other sugary products in school meals.

Meanwhile, an Emory University study described as the first of its kind finds that children who eat lots of sugar are at greater risk for heart disease. Released this week, the study found that sugar accounted for more than 21 percent of the calories in the diets of average teenagers, resulting in lowered levels of “good cholesterol” (HDL) and elevated levels of fat in the blood (triglycerides), both key markers of heart disease.

In examining dietary survey results compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control from 2,157 teenagers across the country, the study found that some teens got an astonishing 30 percent of their calories from sugar. Overweight children with the highest level of sugar consumption also showed increased signs of insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

Most of that sugar is believed to come from sodas and other sugary beverages. Sugar, while delivering calories, has no nutritional value, and some have called it an “anti-nutrient” because of the health problems it can cause. Yet it has become a regular stand-in for real food in school meals because it delivers lots of calories at little cost.

Greg Miller, a nutritionist and executive vice-president of research, regulatory, and scientific affairs at the National Dairy Council, defended flavored milk in school meals, saying he routinely feeds his own children chocolate milk because of the many nutrients it contains — calcium, vitamin D, potassium, phosphorous, riboflavin, to name a few — and because his children won’t drink plain milk.

Miller said studies indicate that kids offered chocolate and other milk products with added sugar get equally good nutrition as do drinkers of plain milk and do not show signs of being any heavier. “Certainly we want to be concerned about sugar,” Miller said. “But I look at other places to cut sugar — less nutrient-dense foods, like cookies.”

The National Dairy Council vigorously promotes flavored milk in school through the industry’s “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” campaign. Miller noted that companies such as milk giant Dean Foods are looking for ways to reduce the sugar content of flavored milk. “We want to be a responsible industry,” he said.

Likewise, the School Nutrition Association (SNA), which is partially funded by the dairy industry, and where dairy interests have a seat on an “industry advisory committee,” also continues to promote flavored milk in schools despite its sugar content.

The SNA represents some 50,000 of the country’s school food service workers, giving it broad influence over the kinds of foods served in school cafeterias.

SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner pointed to proposed nutrition guidelines for school meals, published in October 2009 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), that set no limit for sugar in school meals and make specific allowances for including sugary flavored milk on cafeteria menus.

Saying they were “concerned that eliminating all flavored milk would result in a substantial decrease in milk intake,” committee members cited a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association that found that children who prefer flavored milk drink just as much milk as kids who prefer plain, and get just as much nutrition without adverse weight gain. That study was funded by dairy interests and written by nutritionists with longstanding ties to the industry.

The IOM committee also said it expected that reducing calorie requirements for school meals, increasing the amount of fat permitted, and requiring bigger portions of vegetables and whole grains would tend to squeeze sugar-laden foods such as desserts off school menus. The recommendations, written at the behest of the USDA, have not yet been formally adopted, but are expected to be released today for public comment.

Photo: Ed Bruske

In setting new dietary standards, the IOM found claims that Americans are deficient in calcium and vitamin D to be greatly exaggerated. The dairy industry, which has spent millions of dollars promoting sugary flavored milk in schools based on the idea that children are threatened with a “calcium crisis,” is fighting efforts to remove flavored milk from school menus, saying kids will be in danger of not getting the calcium they need to build strong bones.

Meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence links sugar with an epidemic of childhood obesity as well as a host of related health problems: diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and even an unprecedented outbreak of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

According to the IOM, girls leading up to and during puberty typically consume around 823 milligrams of calcium daily. They should aim to get about 200 milligrams more, or “between 1,000 and 1,100″ milligrams, said Dr. Steven A. Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine who specializes in the calcium intake of children and one of the authors of the IOM report.

By comparison, a one-cup serving of Total cereal contains 1,000 milligrams of calcium, a cup of low-fat milk around 300, and a half-cup of cooked collard greens 200, about the same as in a single serving of string cheese.

“I’ve never been a fan of the term ‘calcium crisis.’ I’m much more in favor of policies that ensure we meet that 1,000 milligrams,” Abrams told me. “What we need to do is make sure that we have a lot of different ways for kids to get to it.”

Sources of calcium besides milk, cheese, and yogurt include fortified cereal and fruit juice, as well as certain green vegetables, such as bok choy, broccoli, and collard greens. Dairy products contain more calcium, but the calcium in vegetables is more readily absorbed by the body.

Abrams declined to address the question of using sugar and flavorings to entice children to drink milk at school, saying “people have different perspectives,” and noting that he sits on a board that advises MilkPEP, the dairy group responsible for the “Got Milk?” and “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” campaigns.

But a leading medical voice on the dangers of sugar, Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco specializing in endocrinology and obesity, said schools should not be offering flavored milk to children.

“But it won’t get fixed any time soon,” Lustig said. “The dairy industry is very tight with the USDA.”

Vitamin D-nial

The IOM report created a sensation when it was released in November because it debunked rampant promotion of vitamin D supplements as a treatment for everything from cancer to arthritis to diabetes. The IOM panel said there was no scientific basis for those claims and found that calcium supplements too are unnecessary. Their report, based on a review of more than 1,000 studies and testimony from medical professionals, constitutes the most authoritative dietary recommendations on calcium and vitamin D to date.

Calcium and vitamin D working in tandem are essential to skeletal health throughout life. Vitamin D actually acts as a hormone, enabling calcium in its job of building and “remodeling” bones, as well as performing vital functions elsewhere in the body. In fact, there is very little study of how much calcium and vitamin D are needed independent of each other. Complicating the task of setting dietary requirements, the IOM panel said, is the fact that vitamin D is synthesized by the skin from sunlight as well as delivered to the body by foods such as oily fish and egg yolks.

In theory, most Americans don’t consume enough vitamin D, but measurements of the hormone in their blood consistently show they have more than enough, indicating they get at least some from sunshine, the panel reported.

Also unknown is the minimum amount of calcium needed for healthy bone growth. Abrams said some experts put the number as low as 600 milligrams in pubescent girls. But he said the IOM panel “chose not to set a minimum number.”

The committee took a more cautious route, adopting 1,100 milligrams of calcium daily as the “estimated average requirement” for all children age 9 to 18, meaning the amount that would ensure that at least half the children in that age group get the calcium they require. But because genetic differences can affect how well some people’s bodies utilize calcium, Abrams said the committee went a step further and established 1,300 milligrams as a “recommended dietary allowance” that would cover 97 percent of all children in the group.

Well-designed studies of children’s calcium intake and its effect on bone health are scarce. One study cited by the panel found that while children who were given extra calcium did show increased bone growth, it did not last after the supplementation ended.

The IOM report makes no mention of bone impairment being suffered by children not getting enough calcium or vitamin D outside the rare cases of rickets experienced by infants, typically those with dark skin who are breastfed after six months. Breast milk contains less vitamin D than does D-fortified infant formula, and dark pigment inhibits the skin’s ability to synthesize sunlight.

Milk sold commercially is fortified with vitamin D. Exactly how much calcium children consume or where they get it isn’t known, although some surveys have attempted to establish a rough idea. For many children, the federally-subsidized school meals program, where milk is a required element at breakfast and at lunch, is an important source of calcium and vitamin D — at least when school is in session.

The 2007 School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study published by the USDA found that the mean 24-hour calcium intake among middle-school students was 1,137 milligrams — or well within the acceptable range — for those who participated in the meals program, but 906 milligrams — less than the recommended amount  — for children who ate outside the subsidized lunch line. Children who participate in the federally-subsidized lunch program are four times as likely to drink milk at school than other children, the USDA reported.

Everything tastes better sweet

A study commissioned last year by the dairy industry, and performed by a company that conducts marketing research for corporate food clients, found that 35 percent fewer elementary school students drank milk when flavored milk was removed from the cafeteria. But the dairy industry has refused to release the full study, and some experts have dismissed it as inherently biased.

Estimates indicate that anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of all milk consumed in schools is chocolate or another flavor with ad
ded sugar. An 8-ounce serving of chocolate milk, for instance, typically contains about 14 grams of high-fructose corn syrup, the equivalent of three and a half teaspoons of sweetener.

Beginning in fall 2010, schools in the District of Columbia ceased serving flavored milk, following districts such as Berkeley, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. The state board of education in Florida also has been considering such a move, but recently was asked by the state’s newly appointed agriculture secretary to put that decision on hold pending further study.

According to Lustig and other anti-sugar activists, the dangers of sugar in the form of fructose outweigh any calcium or vitamin D benefits children might get from drinking flavored milk.

The Los Angeles Times has a detailed report on the growing body of  scientific evidence that until now has been treated as nutritional poison: Fat is good, carbs are bad.

“The country’s big low-fat message backfired,” Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, told the Times. “The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.”

Remember Robert Atkins? He’s the guy who was nearly drummed out of the medical profession for proposing that the way to get slim and stay healthy was to eat lots of meat and fat, and abstain from bread and potatoes.

The Atkins diet struck many as pure craziness. But study after study has shown Atkins more right than wrong. Carbohydrates — meaning plant-derived foods — have been directly linked with elevated triglycerides (fat) in the blood; suppression of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol; increased production of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) that damage arteries; weight gain and high blood pressure.

Eating carbs triggers insulin, the fat storage hormone. Over-consumption can lead to insulin resistance, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.

Put all of these carb-related problems together and you have what medical researchers dub “metabolic syndrome.” According to the Times, 25 percent of Americans now exhibit at least three of the major symptoms of the syndrome, which include elevated triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, fat bellies, and high blood pressure.

Now, oversimplification runs both ways. Not all fat is “good”: the fat from feedlot beef and factory-farm pork and chicken, which are fed loads of carbohydrates, has a different nutritional profile, higher in heart-disease-linked Omega-6 fatty acids, than those that eat their natural diets and forage on pasture, which are rich in Omega-3s. (The Eat Wild website collects the scientific literature on the differences.) And not all carbs are “bad”: complex carbohydrates from whole-plant-based foods cause less of a spike in blood sugar than do refined carbohydrates, i.e. processed foods.

Says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health: “If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.”

I should know: I’ve lost a ton of weight in my middle age and turned my cholesterol readings around by giving up carbs and embracing a diet heavy in pastured meat, eggs, and cheese. I still enjoy salads and green vegetables out of our garden. But I blow up like a balloon if I try even a little dessert. I can’t eat bread. Beer is strictly taboo.

I know it sounds looney, but fat keeps me slim — or what passes for slim in my universe.

Turns out the only two macro-nutrients essential for human survival are protein and fat. Carbs in the form of grains and sugar are a very recent innovation in evolutionary terms, yet Americans may be consuming twice as much of them as they should, thanks in part to decades of medical advice and food marketing urging us to cut back on fat.

Meanwhile, a growing movement says we should abstain from meat to save the environment. Does this latest science not create a real dilemma for those advocating a more plant-based diet? What does it mean for our Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which place carbohydrates at the foundation of healthful eating? And what about the orange juice, chocolate milk, and sugary cereals that most schools feed kids for breakfast every morning?

The L.A. Times avoids the question vegetarians everywhere must be asking: what about whole grains and legumes, the bedrock of a thrifty, non-meat diet?

I predict that in 2011, the nutritious-diet wars will shift to implicate spelt and lentils.

Elementary school children in southeast Washington, D.C., eat their lunch. Photo: Eugene Menbane/Bread for the World

While that’s a much-needed infusion of cash, school food services professionals say the move could have the side effect of driving hundreds of thousands of children from the federally subsidized school meals program. The School Nutrition Association (SNA), representing some 50,000 food service workers across the country, likens the new law to cuts in federal support for school meals enacted during the Reagan years, when participation in the National School Lunch Program plummeted 25 percent among full-price students because schools were forced to charge more — and ketchup was declared a vegetable.

“When you raise prices, it has a real impact on participation,” said SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner. “Our members tell us time and time again, even when they raise prices by just a dime, they see participation drop.”

“The downside of raising meal prices during these tough economic times is that you run the risk of making the meals unaffordable for kids whose families just barely miss the financial eligibility cut-off,” said Kate Adamick, a school-food consultant who has long complained about the pricing disparity. “This is a significant reality in lower-middle class communities, especially for schools located in parts of the country in which the cost of living is extremely high, such as New York City and San Francisco, to name just two. I think this is the right change that may be coming at the wrong time.”

Federal subsidies for school meals are intended primarily to help feed low-income children, who receive meals either free or at a reduced price. Even kids who don’t qualify and pay “full price” in the subsidized meal line are actually supported by federal funds to the tune of 26 to 34 cents per lunch. But what most schools charge for a full-price meal typically is less than the federal subsidy, currently $1.48 for breakfast and $2.72 for lunch. For instance, here in the District of Columbia, schools serve breakfast free to all students regardless of their ability to pay, while a full-price elementary school lunch is only $1.25, a high school lunch a mere $1.50.

Free breakfasts and underpriced lunches help explain why D.C. schools rack up $7 million in food service deficits every year, or 25 percent of the entire budget.

Critics argue that underpricing also helps explain why schools never seem to have enough money to improve the quality of the food they serve, and that low-income children should not be short-changed in order to support kids who come from wealthier homes, even though there is nothing in federal law to say that government subsidies can only be used to feed needy students. Food service professionals counter that lower prices attract more kids to the meal line, creating economies of scale and helping to lower the marginal cost of meals served in a program they contend is chronically underfunded.

“We all know the effect of higher prices on people’s purchasing decisions, and this basic economics lesson applies to school meals as well,” Pratt-Heavner said. The new rule, she said, is likely to fall heaviest on families in rural and economically depressed areas where parents ”simply cannot afford to pay the higher school-lunch prices charged in wealthier suburban neighborhoods.”  

Under the formula approved by Congress, schools that are not charging the full cost for lunch would have to start raising their prices annually by an amount equal to the rate of inflation plus 2 percent. For some schools, getting their prices fully caught up could take 20 years.

A study released in January 2010 by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonprofit research organization focused on low-income Americans, noted that student payments for federally reimbursable meals account for only about one-quarter of school food-service revenues. The greatest share of income comes in the form of federal subsidies, with sales of competitive foods in á la carte lines (often unhealthy snacks like cookies and chips) and vending machines contributing about 16 percent, and state and local governments chipping in another 9 percent on average.

A study conducted during the 2005-2006 school year by the USDA, which oversees the school meals program, found that the prices schools charged for paid lunches varied widely, from 65 cents to $3, with the most common price being $1.50 — well below cost. A more recent analysis by the CBPP of the nation’s 20 largest school districts found that the average charge for lunch was $1.80 in elementary schools and $2.14 in high schools, still far less than the federal reimbursement rate.

“School districts generally want to set a price that is affordable for the wide range of families with incomes in the paid meal category,” the CBPP concluded. “The disparity results in a revenue shortfall that undermines the goal of providing the highest quality meal possible to all students.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities cited a USDA study as showing that student participation in the subsidized lunch program was only 3 percent lower in districts that charged $2 per meal compared to $1.50 per meal. But in a program involving more than 31 million children nationwide, that 3 percent would represent nearly 1 million students.

Said the SNA’s Pratt-Heavnery: “Unfortunately, no one knows how severe the decline in participation will be as a result of [the new law], and that’s a risky gamble to play with a program that is vital to the nutrition and well-being of millions of school children.”

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in Ed Bruske’s epic Cafeteria Confidential: Boulder series. Yet despite these in-depth dispatches, Ed still left out a lot. To read about his couch-surfing adventures in Boulder and his behind-the-scenes observations of kids at lunch, visit his blog, The Slow Cook, for an epilogue. 

Is Ann Cooper a superhero, or can any school district do what she’s done in Boulder?

Ann Cooper is conducting a clinic in Boulder on how to rescue school food. Is anyone paying attention?

In remaking the lunch line in Boulder schools, Cooper has revealed the federally subsidized school meals program as living somewhere in the Stone Age. Not merely underfunded, school kitchens are woefully under-managed and under-equipped to function in a digital age. No wonder they constantly run in the red. Schools are incapable of serving real food any more because they are mired in lack of imagination, lack of will, and above all, lack of professional know-how when it comes to producing meals with recognizable whole ingredients.

In other words, Cooper has proven that serving better food in school is not just about getting a bigger handout from Uncle Sam. Turning out wholesome meals, as opposed to the reheated junk so many school districts pass off as food, can be done on the current budget. But getting there takes guts, hard work, and brains — hardly the qualities that win advancement in public-school bureaucracies.

“People just don’t get that the existing system already has virtually all the money it needs,” said school-food consultant Kate Adamick, who has made a career out of showing school districts how they can capture millions of dollars by correcting a multitude of inefficiencies.

Myth busting

Why do schools need hired guns like Adamick and Cooper to get the job done? Why are school food service directors so often the greatest obstacle to progress? In case after case, school district after school district, it is the career school food functionary who digs in her heels and shouts, “It can’t be done! Kids won’t eat healthier food! We have to feed them junk to make our program work!”

It’s not just about money: where better school food is concerned, leadership is in critically short supply.

Cooper explodes the myth embraced by so many school food service directors that they must offer cheese-covered soft pretzels, Subway sandwiches, corn dogs, and Eskimo pies to make ends meet. One of her first acts after taking over in Boulder was to abolish the á la carte foods the schools were serving. And it wasn’t just because the food was bad. Trying to operate cafeterias like convenience stores, she found, was a drain on resources that did not yield the bounty that is popularly assumed.

“When you really look into all the loss in product, the storage problems, the waste, the time needed for invoicing, the staffing requirements, we don’t believe it’s really profitable,” said Cooper. “And it takes away from the core mission” — which is, of course, nourishing children.

Removing á la carte took a big bite out of Cooper’s cash flow. But here’s the surprise: She’s recovering by selling better food and more of it. Her success is all the more remarkable because kids in Boulder do not depend on federally subsidized meals: only 18 percent of them qualify as low income. Should Cooper realize her goal of making her reformed food service self-sufficient in Boulder, it will be because kids actually like her home-made enchiladas and salad bars and can get along without Otis Spunkmeyer cookies and Gatorade every day. By implication, modeling Cooper’s work would only be easier in urban school districts, where enrollment of low-income children is much higher.

It would be hard to think of another government program so vital as school lunch that is subject to as much lip service and window-dressing posing as reform.

Revamping school food is not for sissies. To wring waste and inefficiency from Boulder cafeterias, Cooper pushed long-time “lunch ladies” into a purely supportive role, cutting deeply into their work hours and bringing in a crew of professional chefs to do the actual cooking. In the process, she tapped a potentially vast reservoir of trained kitchen talent who would gladly sign on to the school food revolution — if only there were a revolution to sign on to.

Not everyone agrees with this approach. Adamick, a friend and occasional coworker of Cooper’s, believes that cafeteria workers — “lunch teachers,” as she prefers to call them — are the solution, not the problem. If we take the time to train them and give them the proper equipment, Adamick insists, they can serve meals cooked from scratch in schools coast-to-coast.

“The reality is that virtually no school district can afford the luxury of what the Boulder school district has,” said Adamick. “Ninety percent of this battle will be won if we can restore the pride and self-respect of the lunch teachers. Our responsibility is to provide those people with the skills they need.”

Doing so, Adamick admits, would take much longer. Cooper chose not to wait.

Let them eat cake

Can the nation’s school children afford to wait? If there’s any one message that rings loud and clear from my travels through three very different school districts over the past year, it’s that waiting for a solution from the federal government is a fool’s game.

Congress has shown itself remarkably resistant to the idea of adding even a few pennies more to the school food budget. The USDA, charged with administering the meals program, is a monument to bureaucratic inertia that seems better suited to enforcing its vast web of rules than pointing the way forward — unless that involves helping corporate interests put their brand of industrially processed convenience foods on kids’ cafeteria trays.

It would be hard to think of another government program so vital as school lunch that is subject to as much lip service and window-dressing posing as reform. Michelle Obama’s high-profile attack on childhood obesity, while generating lots of buzz around vegetables and school gardens, has driven white-jacketed chefs into paroxysms of grade-school cooking demonstrations but thus far has failed to yield a political mandate for overhauling the nation’s cafeterias. The School Nutrition Association, while ostensibly safeguarding the gustatory well-being of the nation’s school children, is a relic of the last century: corrupted by industry influence, dishing out reheated chicken nuggets, and pushing kids to drink more chocolate milk.

Indeed, in all three of the school districts that I have observed at close hand — the District of Columbia; Berkeley, Calif., and now Boulder — change has not been handed down from Washington but has bubbled up from within outraged local communities. It takes parents, school administrators, and local elected officials fed up with horrendous school food to turn things around. In the case of Berkeley and Boulder — communities primed for a school food uprising — Cooper happened to be the catalyst who set radical change in motion. She not only knows how to do it, she has the charisma and leadership qualities to make it happen. And in Boulder, parents were not only ready for Cooper, they
had the deep pockets to make her vision a reality.

Unfortunately for the nation’s other 15,000 school districts, there’s only one Ann Cooper. Or maybe there’s a solution we just haven’t imagined yet.