Duval County Public Schools are forbidding students from bringing in cupcakes, candy, or other treats to share with their classmates during classroom birthday celebrations and holidays.
DCPS claim the new policy is aimed at improving student health and wellness, and includes asking teachers to move away from providing food as an incentive in class.
Under the district’s old policy, parents could not bake cookies or cupcakes for their child to bring to school. But if they bought them, it was okay to bring them in to share with classmates on birthdays.
Most of the districts classrooms choose one day each month to recognize and celebrate the birthdays of those children born in that month, usually with a cupcake or a cookie. Starting next school year, that will no longer be allowed.
Duval County Public Schools spokeswoman Laureen Ricks released this statement on the policy: As a district, we want to reinforce healthy behaviors. Among other positive, healthy shifts, we’re moving away from food-centered celebrations and providing food as incentives. This was the rationale behind the update to the wellness policy, which was approved by the Board at its monthly meeting in March. It is the expectation of the district that all schools follow the guidelines set forth in the policy. District staff work with Healthy School Teams at locations to determine implementation methods at the school level.
Please note that the discretion to determine what celebrations look like in their respective schools is left to individual principals. This is outlined in the policy, which states, “School and class celebrations may be held with the permission of the school principal, in moderation. Parents and staff are strongly encouraged to provide items that are non-food or snacks that meet the nutritional guidelines. Celebrations should be held during or after the scheduled lunch time whenever possible.”
The new guidelines are not going over well with the majority of parents. According to an online poll conducted by News4Jax 89% are against the change while only 11% support it.
In particular the timing has many parents fuming. The decision was made in March but parents were not notified until the last week of school.
Many parents feel that this was purposefully done to keep parents from having any say in the matter and that they will “calm down and accept the new rule” over the summer.
One parent I spoke to said “First they told us we couldn’t make the cupcakes, we had to buy store made cupcakes, now we can’t send those either. Next I won’t be allowed to send her lunch. They’ll outlaw that to. It’s all about money. They want you to have to buy everything in the cafeteria, all about money, all about money.”
Another parent added, “Those meals (cafeteria) aren’t even real meals, not like I send. They’ve cut some of the sugar out but all that premade, canned, frozen stuff they serve is full of sodium! And they tell us they care about our children’s health! Hardly.”
Jax Examiner took a closer look at the Duval County School lunch program and the parents were not wrong. There is a lot of money, nearly 45 million dollars per school year and a lot of sodium. Many of the offerings have more than twice the daily recommended limit of sodium. (1500 mg daily divided by 3 meals equals 500 per meal)
Chartwells, a subsidiary of Compass Group USA, is the current Foodservice Management Company in charge of food and vending services at all Duval County Schools and School Board owned properties.
Long gone are the days of 3- 6 local ladies running the cafeteria at our children’s school. School lunch is now big business. 45.6 million dollars worth of business. That’s the renewal, the fourth renewal of Chartwells contract with the City of Jacksonville, effective July 1st of this year.
2014-2015 $42,670,121
2015-2016 42,651,313
2016-2017 42,670,781
2017-2018 45,000,000
2018-2019 45,600,000
For a total of $218,592,215.00 one company has been paid to manage the foodservice for Duval County Public Schools for five years. The 2019-2020 school year will start the bid process again and rest assured, we will be paying even more.
Back to those cupcakes the school Board will not allow you to send for the once a month birthday party.
The average medium size cupcake, we’ll go with chocolate as, why not? And frosting, because…it’s a cupcake! 150 calories 170 mg sodium.
Now for the cupcakes they want you to buy from Chartwells. They don’t have any. What they do have are “Assorted Scratch Made Muffins”
And by scratch made they mean it arrives as a batter, already made in big plastic tubs and the cafeteria stuff scoop it into muffin tins and bake it onsite.
Assorted Scratch Made Muffins 240 calories 280 mg sodium.
So we have the cupcake parents are now forbidden from sending to school
At 150 calories 170 mg sodium and the Assorted Scratch Made Muffin that the School Board wants us to buy from Chartwells at 240 calories 280 mg sodium.
It would stand to reason if the School Board’s decision really was aimed at improving student health and wellness that those figures would be reversed.
But face the facts, the School Board’s decision to use Chartwells and in turn to force parents to use Chartwells has little to do with improving student health and wellness and nearly everything to do with dollars and cents.
45.6 million dollars worth of dollars and cents.
As for the incredible high levels of sodium, when a business chooses to utilize premade products those products are going to be full of preservatives, sodium included.
We wanted to make sure we hadn’t, in our cupcake vs muffin comparison, inadvertently selected the only high sodium item on Chartwell’s menu.
We hadn’t. In fact since it’s the end of the year only a partial menu was left on their website. Even so we found many items with high sodium content.
Macaroni and Cheese 530 mg sodium
Turkey Taco 640 mg sodium
Pepperoni Pizza 770 mg sodium
Grilled Chicken Sandwich 810 mg sodium
Classic American Cheeseburger 820 mg sodium
BBQ Grilled Chicken 830 mg sodium
Spicy Chicken Sandwich 850 mg sodium
Open Faced Pepperoni Sandwich 950 mg sodium
Half Italian Hoagie 970 mg sodium
Chicken & Biscuit Box 1000 mg sodium
Taco Tots 1090 mg sodium
Buffalo Grilled Chicken Wrap 1130 mg sodium
Bacon Grilled Cheese Sandwich 1740 mg sodium
Keep in mind if condiments are added, the sodium goes up
Ketchup 80 mg sodium (per pack)
Mustard 65 mg sodium (per pack)
Fat free ranch 80 mg (per pack)
An ideal limit of no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day as per the American Heart Association would breakdown to 500 mg per meal yet many of Chartwell’s offerings exceed that, some double, others triple.
As to our question of Health and wellness or dollars and cents. I believe we have our answer.
