New York Times out to lunch on cafeteria story
It's time to take a look at a March 1 Page 1 New York Times story, "Free Lunch Isn't Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry," spotlighting SFUSD's cafeteria practices and making some misstatements in the process.
Special "huh?" awards go to two sources mentioned in the article: Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, an official with the San Francisco Department of Public Health who claims — despite the fact that SFUSD officials and we SFUSD advocates have been addressing this very issue for years now — to be the one who discovered that low-income students may be stigmatized by having to eat school meals; and Colleen Kavanagh of the Campaign for Better Nutrition, who has been contacting regulators and the press with hot tips that turn out to be inaccurate.
The point of the article is that when there's a school cafeteria "mainline" serving the meals that officially qualify for federal reimbursement for low-income students, plus a separate line selling a la carte items that are available only to students with money to buy them, that humiliates the students who can't afford the a la carte items. Then some low-income students go without lunch out of embarrassment. (These are middle-schoolers and especially high-schoolers, the article notes; younger students don't sense the stigma yet.)
"Overt identification" of low-income students is illegal, but the USDA (which regulates school meal programs) has long ruled that this setup isn't overt identification.That's because non-low-income students may buy the mainline meals too; the mainline isn't specifically for low-income students. The USDA ruled that standing in one line or the other doesn't inherently identify a student's income status.
The fact that SFUSD doesn't use a cashless debit-card system, aka point of sale (POS) system, is a key problem in that it can be apparent which students are paying cash. The SFUSD Student Nutrition department and school food advocates have been calling for such a system — which is standard in up-to-date school meal programs — for years. It would require about a $1 million investment, which SFUSD has not been able to come up with, even though the system would rapidly pay for itself because of the many efficiencies it brings with it. Such a system is being piloted in a few SFUSD schools (currently five, I believe).
SFUSD has applied for grants for a districtwide POS system. One application was made in early 2006 for funding from a source called the Vitamin Cases Consumer Settlement Fund — unsuccessfully, despite high hopes. The proposal cited the stigmatization of low-income students. (In fact, Colleen Kavanagh, a member of SFUSD's Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, co-wrote the grant proposal along with then-SFUSD administrator Matt Kelemen.) Then a request for city Prop. H funds for the system — written in fall 2007 by Dana Woldow and me and also emphasizing the issue of stigmatizing low-income students — appeared to be on the verge of approval when the state budget disaster hit and Superintendent Garcia ordered available Prop. H funds frozen for use in a crisis.
It also seemed odd that the NYT article focused on SFUSD when it included the information that New York City's school meal program has the same problem — this is the New York Times. While it mentioned that NYC is using some innovative strategies to try to get more low-income kids to eat lunch, the article still said that 37% of SFUSD's eligible high schoolers eat lunch, compared with 40% of NYC's — those are both estimates, so presuming a significant margin of error, both school districts are feeding about the same percentage of low-income high-schoolers.
To those of us who are longtime SFUSD school food advocates, the strangest thing about the article was its entirely inaccurate portrayal of this issue as one that had been overlooked and ignored until Dr. Bhatia stepped up to expose it.
In reality, co-blogger Dana Woldow, who is parent volunteer co-chair of the Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee (SNPAC), had at the time the article ran made 14 formal speeches over about four years requesting the POS system — either to the Board of Education, the Board of Supervisors or their joint committee. All of those requests emphasized concerns about stigmatizing low-income students. Since the article ran, Dana has made yet another speech to the Board of Ed about it. Many other advocates have also contacted the Board of Ed about the issue and discussed it in online parent forums.
Meanwhile, SFUSD Student Nutrition has been researching feasible ways to eliminate the two separate lines. Some students will be troubled if the solution requires eliminating the a la carte sales, but changes seem to be in the works.
So it was just plain weird that the NYT article claimed that everyone who was actually involved in this work was "blind" to the problem and portrayed Dr. Bhatia as the one who stepped forward to expose it. I've never met or seen Dr. Bhatia, despite attending many, many meetings addressing these very issues over the past five years.
From the article:
The article also described (this time accurately) an unproductive campaign by Ms. Kavanagh — who has launched an organization called the Campaign for Better Nutrition — to try to bring legal and regulatory sanctions down upon SFUSD. She contacted the organization Public Advocates with an inaccurate tip that SFUSD provided meal cards only to low-income students that would identify them to observers. That's incorrect — actually, every student gets a meal card. Public Advocates and the USDA devoted some effort to investigating, based on Ms. Kavanagh's bad information, which has also led to media tips that didn't pan out, leaving at least one reporter staking out district headquarters for an explosive story that never happened.
But it's the part of the article giving Dr. Bhatia credit for exposing a problem — one that in reality many of us had been addressing for years — that was truly inaccurate and misleading. So I was pretty shocked when I got in touch with the New York Times, contacting both respected reporter Carol Pogash and her editor, Joan Nassivera, and no correction was forthcoming. I sent my complaint on to the Times' public editor, but enough time has elapsed that I'm assuming he's not looking into it.
The Times has a reputation for scrupulously correcting teeny-tiny, meaningless errors and refusing to address substantial ones. Apparently, it's well-deserved. In fact, on the day I sent my complaint to the public editor, I checked the Times' corrections column, which included a correction on the fact that the name of the cosmetics line Helena Rubinstein had been misspelled in an article. Glad they struck a courageous blow for journalistic standards and ethics by clearing that up.
In the meantime, here in SFUSD, the true need is for adequate funding to provide higher-quality meals for all students. And work continues on getting the POS and finding ways to eliminate the separate a la carte line in student cafeterias. I still haven't seen Dr. Bhatia around doing any of it, strangely.
Special "huh?" awards go to two sources mentioned in the article: Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, an official with the San Francisco Department of Public Health who claims — despite the fact that SFUSD officials and we SFUSD advocates have been addressing this very issue for years now — to be the one who discovered that low-income students may be stigmatized by having to eat school meals; and Colleen Kavanagh of the Campaign for Better Nutrition, who has been contacting regulators and the press with hot tips that turn out to be inaccurate.
The point of the article is that when there's a school cafeteria "mainline" serving the meals that officially qualify for federal reimbursement for low-income students, plus a separate line selling a la carte items that are available only to students with money to buy them, that humiliates the students who can't afford the a la carte items. Then some low-income students go without lunch out of embarrassment. (These are middle-schoolers and especially high-schoolers, the article notes; younger students don't sense the stigma yet.)
"Overt identification" of low-income students is illegal, but the USDA (which regulates school meal programs) has long ruled that this setup isn't overt identification.That's because non-low-income students may buy the mainline meals too; the mainline isn't specifically for low-income students. The USDA ruled that standing in one line or the other doesn't inherently identify a student's income status.
The fact that SFUSD doesn't use a cashless debit-card system, aka point of sale (POS) system, is a key problem in that it can be apparent which students are paying cash. The SFUSD Student Nutrition department and school food advocates have been calling for such a system — which is standard in up-to-date school meal programs — for years. It would require about a $1 million investment, which SFUSD has not been able to come up with, even though the system would rapidly pay for itself because of the many efficiencies it brings with it. Such a system is being piloted in a few SFUSD schools (currently five, I believe).
SFUSD has applied for grants for a districtwide POS system. One application was made in early 2006 for funding from a source called the Vitamin Cases Consumer Settlement Fund — unsuccessfully, despite high hopes. The proposal cited the stigmatization of low-income students. (In fact, Colleen Kavanagh, a member of SFUSD's Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, co-wrote the grant proposal along with then-SFUSD administrator Matt Kelemen.) Then a request for city Prop. H funds for the system — written in fall 2007 by Dana Woldow and me and also emphasizing the issue of stigmatizing low-income students — appeared to be on the verge of approval when the state budget disaster hit and Superintendent Garcia ordered available Prop. H funds frozen for use in a crisis.
It also seemed odd that the NYT article focused on SFUSD when it included the information that New York City's school meal program has the same problem — this is the New York Times. While it mentioned that NYC is using some innovative strategies to try to get more low-income kids to eat lunch, the article still said that 37% of SFUSD's eligible high schoolers eat lunch, compared with 40% of NYC's — those are both estimates, so presuming a significant margin of error, both school districts are feeding about the same percentage of low-income high-schoolers.
To those of us who are longtime SFUSD school food advocates, the strangest thing about the article was its entirely inaccurate portrayal of this issue as one that had been overlooked and ignored until Dr. Bhatia stepped up to expose it.
In reality, co-blogger Dana Woldow, who is parent volunteer co-chair of the Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee (SNPAC), had at the time the article ran made 14 formal speeches over about four years requesting the POS system — either to the Board of Education, the Board of Supervisors or their joint committee. All of those requests emphasized concerns about stigmatizing low-income students. Since the article ran, Dana has made yet another speech to the Board of Ed about it. Many other advocates have also contacted the Board of Ed about the issue and discussed it in online parent forums.
Meanwhile, SFUSD Student Nutrition has been researching feasible ways to eliminate the two separate lines. Some students will be troubled if the solution requires eliminating the a la carte sales, but changes seem to be in the works.
So it was just plain weird that the NYT article claimed that everyone who was actually involved in this work was "blind" to the problem and portrayed Dr. Bhatia as the one who stepped forward to expose it. I've never met or seen Dr. Bhatia, despite attending many, many meetings addressing these very issues over the past five years.
From the article:
"Here in San Francisco, which has such a commitment to equality, this kind of segregation is occurring very blatantly,” Dr. Bhatia said. “Good and committed people trying to improve student food were blind to it.”
Dr. Bhatia said he decided that “somebody has to speak up,” and began pressing the school district to make changes.
The article also described (this time accurately) an unproductive campaign by Ms. Kavanagh — who has launched an organization called the Campaign for Better Nutrition — to try to bring legal and regulatory sanctions down upon SFUSD. She contacted the organization Public Advocates with an inaccurate tip that SFUSD provided meal cards only to low-income students that would identify them to observers. That's incorrect — actually, every student gets a meal card. Public Advocates and the USDA devoted some effort to investigating, based on Ms. Kavanagh's bad information, which has also led to media tips that didn't pan out, leaving at least one reporter staking out district headquarters for an explosive story that never happened.
But it's the part of the article giving Dr. Bhatia credit for exposing a problem — one that in reality many of us had been addressing for years — that was truly inaccurate and misleading. So I was pretty shocked when I got in touch with the New York Times, contacting both respected reporter Carol Pogash and her editor, Joan Nassivera, and no correction was forthcoming. I sent my complaint on to the Times' public editor, but enough time has elapsed that I'm assuming he's not looking into it.
The Times has a reputation for scrupulously correcting teeny-tiny, meaningless errors and refusing to address substantial ones. Apparently, it's well-deserved. In fact, on the day I sent my complaint to the public editor, I checked the Times' corrections column, which included a correction on the fact that the name of the cosmetics line Helena Rubinstein had been misspelled in an article. Glad they struck a courageous blow for journalistic standards and ethics by clearing that up.
In the meantime, here in SFUSD, the true need is for adequate funding to provide higher-quality meals for all students. And work continues on getting the POS and finding ways to eliminate the separate a la carte line in student cafeterias. I still haven't seen Dr. Bhatia around doing any of it, strangely.
Labels: Nutrition
10 Comments:
uhh, i thought it WAS spelled "rubenstein"
thanks!!
also.. wanted you to see this...
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/image/la-ig-kindergarten6apr06,0,4070581.story
i don't know how to hyperlink.. sorry
Hi Anonymous -- that link is too long to work in this format. Maybe you can post some keywords so we can find it another way?
(Re Helena Rubinstein -- see what you can learn from the media?)
kindergarten L.A. Times
try that.
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While Caroline Grannan devotes much effort to discrediting me and Rajiv Bhatia in her blog, she fails to address the core issue:
Is it acceptable or not to segregate lower income students from their peers in San Francisco’s school cafeterias?
The school superintendent has stated publicly that this segregation is not acceptable, and he is working diligently to eliminate it.
Since there is not any dispute that the problem exists (even Ms. Grannan admits it is occurring) or that it is being fixed, one can only assume that the purpose of Ms. Grannan’s article was to level inaccurate and ad hominem attacks against Dr. Bhatia and myself. How does this benefit the students?
Wouldn’t it serve the students better if Ms. Grannan and Ms. Woldow had used the time they spent on this article on efforts to improve school food instead? It appears, however, that their primary concern right now is to shape how others view their involvement in eliminating segregation in the cafeteria. This is an unfortunate and counter-productive distraction for all of us committed to improving school food.
The straight fact is that no firm commitments were made to fix the problem until the New York Times ran its article and the superintendent was made aware of the legal issues of the situation. Yet, the entire basis of Ms. Grannan’s piece is to criticize the article and the people in it.
There are too many errors in Ms. Grannan’s article to address without losing focus on the main issue. I do want to point out, however, that I have never suggested SFUSD should be sued or otherwise sanctioned for overtly identifying poor children in the cafeteria; I merely asked the superintendent to fix the problem. And, he is. If anyone is interested in a more lengthy discussion of the issue, they can learn more at www.campaignforbetternutrition.org.
Colleen Kavanagh
Executive Director
Campaign for Better Nutrition
Obviously I "admit" that the problem is occurring, as I emphasized that we have been addressing the issues for several years. My point is that there were inaccuracies in the NYT article, primarily the claim that no one had been addressing the problem until Dr. Bhatia brought it up.
Dana Woldow and I and many others continue to devote extensive time to school food issues, as we have for many years now -- all of it unpaid in my case and Dana's.
"The straight fact is that no firm commitments were made to fix the problem until the New York Times ran its article and the superintendent was made aware of the legal issues of the situation."
Sorry, this is simply untrue. Caroline and another district parent and I met with the (then new) Superintendent in August 2007, before he even took over the position officially, and at that time he committed to finding the money for the Point of Sale (POS) system which would eliminate the use of cash in purchasing school food.
Later in the fall of 2007, the Superintendent supported the proposal Caroline and I wrote to use Prop H funds to pay for the POS. With a funding source identified, the final piece of the puzzle came when Brianne Ford, the new head of the information technology department, enthusiastically embraced the project. The previous head of IT, close to retirement after a long career, had been reluctant to take on what will undoubtedly be a long term and somewhat cumbersome project (wiring all 100 plus schools for the POS, and maintaining it.) Without the support of the IT department, this project was going nowhere, but with IT’s support, it was able to move forward.
Because neither Ms Kavanagh nor Mr. Bhatia have children in the San Francisco public schools, and neither of them work for the SF public schools, or have any day to day contact at all with the SF public schools, they were unaware of all of the effort going on behind the scenes to move the POS forward, work which predated the March 1st 2008 New York Times article.
Just to be clear, despite what Ms Kavanagh claimed when she sought an opinion from the legal group Public Advocates, there are no "special tickets" for school meals in use in the SFUSD, nor is the use of meal cards in the lunch line limited to low income students. It is the use of cash, not any kind of identifying card or ticket, which makes it possible to distinguish paying students; however, because the district maintains a "No Child Left Hungry" policy, which provides a complete meal to any child who comes through the lunch line with no money to pay, it is not possible to determine which students without cash are qualified for free lunch, and which are students on paying status who, for one reason or another, have failed to bring lunch money on that particular day.
Despite the claims made by Ms Kavanagh and Mr. Bhatia, the USDA, which oversees school meal programs, found no evidence of “overt identification” in the SFUSD meal program. Note that the USDA report delivered this spring is the second in 12 months to support this finding. There are no “legal issues”, unless Ms Kavanagh or Mr. Bhatia plan to file some kind of lawsuit against the district, but without a ruling from the USDA to back up their spurious claims, that seems unlikely to be successful.
(1) First, I acknowledge and appreciate all the work you and others did to obtain a POS system for the district. However, regarding your statement that the district was firmly committed to POS for many months prior to the New York Times article and the letter from CBN raising legal questions around this issue, I offer this from the Jan. 10, 2008 minutes of the meeting of the Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, which you co-chair:
Nancy Waymack [of SFUSD] reported that due to the possible crippling budget cuts forecast for the state budget, even the Superintendent may withdraw his support for the POS proposal, as he looks for every possible dollar to fund day to day school operations. (Emphasis added.)
No one can reasonably call that a firm commitment. It was because of this backtracking that we decided we needed to press the legal issues to obtain a firm commitment, which we have now obtained. And the commitment goes beyond POS to reworking or eliminating a la carte sales so that they do not cause overt identification because, as you know, POS is only a partial solution to resolving this problem.
(2) “Special tickets” are not among issues on which CBN asked Public Advocates opinion. You may be thinking of the following citation to the California Education Code in Public Advocates’ opinion:
California Education Code section 49557 provides that local school boards and county superintendents of schools “shall ensure” that children eligible for free and reduced price lunch not be subject to “overt identification. . . by the use of special tokens or tickets or by any other means” and “not be required to use a separate dining area, go through a separate serving line, enter the dining area through a separate entrance, or consume their meals or milk at a different time.”
I believe your reference to “special tickets” is based on a question raised by CBN concerning our observation that only low income students were seen carrying meal cards at the numerous schools we visited (which Public Advocates refers to as “special meal cards”). CBN mistakenly told Public Advocates that this is because the district issues meal cards only to low income students. In fact, all students are issued meal cards at the district level, but students who are not defined as low income were not seen presenting them at the point of payment (either because they did not receive them or they were not required by the school to use them to obtain meals. You pointed out this error in a communication to me after I sent you a copy of Public Advocates’ letter on February 1st. This misunderstanding and correction, of course, does not change the reality for students. Regardless of why only low income students were carrying cards, the cards remain a means for distinguishing the low-income students from their peers.
In any event, my Feb. 8 letter to the superintendent did not raise the issue of meal card distribution (and neither did the New York Times article). Instead, the letter noted that at the numerous middle and high schools we visited (1) students were de facto segregated into separate lines and sometimes even by dining hall according to income status (2) meal cards were being used only by students receiving free and reduced price meals, not by other students, and (3) low income students were offered different food than other students. All of these are very obvious identifiers of low income students to their peers.
Putting aside the open legal issue of whether these practices are “overt identification” within the meaning of the statutes (and thus illegal), in plain English, these practices overtly identify low-income students as being poor. It is damaging to those students and should be stopped.
(2) Turning to the legal issue, you emphasize the fact that USDA did not consider these practices to be against the law. This is a legal opinion, and the USDA’s opinion notwithstanding, all the lawyers I have consulted with disagree, and I have consulted with numerous lawyers in addition to Public Advocates. Just because a government agency, in this case USDA, takes a position that something is not illegal doesn’t mean it is not. Look at all the disputes between the Bush administration and Congress on the legality of numerous administrative actions (and inactions) over the past seven years.
As I suggested earlier, the question those who have the students’ best interests in mind should be asking is this simple:
Are the practices wrong?
Since the NYT article, I have been contacted by people in other cities saying this problem is happening in their schools and they want it to be fixed, as SF is fixing its problem. I also have received messages of support from literally scores of individuals expressing dismay and surprise at the segregation occurring in our schools. They do not care if the USDA, a city agency, or a committee see it as illegal--they know it is wrong. Hopefully, they will not have to wait for Congress to expressly define it as illegal before it is stopped nation-wide (note that many school districts many have already fixed this problem but others have not--we do not have data on the ratio).
(3) Finally, the fact that Rajiv Bhatia and I do not have children in SF public schools is irrelevant. I have worked to improve child nutrition for low income families for 17 years on the federal, state and local level, both paid and unpaid. During much of that time I did not even have children and even now I do not have low income children. It has never been suggested in my 17 year career that I cannot be effective in this area because of either fact.
I assume your suggestion in raising this issue is that a person needs to be personally affected by the injustices they fight or social goods they support in order to be valid and effective. Luckily, this standard is not seen as generally true or we would be woefully lacking in people working to improve our world. Advocates across the spectrum--for food stamps, stopping violence in Darfur, ending capital punishment, improving health care for low income families, as just a few examples--are often not people who are personally and directly affected by those issues. They are people who care passionately about eliminating injustice in their communities and the world. I applaud their efforts and do not disparage them for not being directly effected by the issue for which they advocate. To the contrary, despite the fact that they will not directly benefit from their efforts, they fight for these issues because they seek a greater social good. I also applaud the efforts of people who work to better San Francisco’s public schools, including Ms. Woldow and Ms. Grannan, whether their children are attending those schools or not.
(4) Finally, regardless of any response to this posting, this will be my last posting here because I fail to see how this public discussion furthers our mutual goal of improving school food. We disagree only on tactics, which is a disagreement best discussed directly with each other rather than in a public forum. We have served on the SFUSD Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee together since 2003. You have my contact information. I would be happy to continue this conversation on email, phone or in person. Any one else wishing to contact me directly can obtain my contact information at www.campaignforbetternutrition.org.
Colleen Kavanagh
Executive Director
Campaign for Better Nutrition
Nancy Waymack’s remarks are being taken out of context. What she told the members of the nutrition committee at the January meeting was that the Superintendent was about to announce (and he subsequently DID announce) that he was recommending a spending freeze for all new “third third” Prop H money. It was from this pot of money that we had expected to fund the POS. However, the Superintendent had said all along, right from our first meeting with him in August 2007, that he would find the money for this project “somewhere”; at no time did he commit to a specific funding source. As recently as this past Friday (April 11th), even as progress on the POS continues to move forward, no funding source has been identified. So it is not accurate to claim that just because the Superintendent froze some of the Prop H funds meant that he did not support implementing the POS. It meant that he would not be able to commit those specific funds to the POS until after the district’s budget allocation from the state became clearer. That remains the case today, and the funding source is no more “firm” now, in the aftermath of Ms Kavanagh and Dr Bhatia’s actions, than it ever was.
Funding, or lack thereof, is at the root of most district problems and virtually all of the problems related to Student Nutrition Services. With the budget disaster projected to last for at least the next two years, it is more important than ever that those working to improve school food, especially those whose focus is on helping the most needy students, educate themselves about the SFUSD budget and school financing in general. This is an extremely complex area; it has been said that only 6 people in California understand how school funding here works, 5 of them are lying, and the sixth is John Mockler (author of Prop 98, which guaranteed public schools at least 40% of the state’s general fund.)
The parents and SFUSD staff who serve on the nutrition committee all understand, in a way which those without any day to day connection with the public schools do not, the immediate impact on needy students of any kind of cuts to the district budget. Those of us who have served for many years on the School Site Councils of our children’s schools have experience in grappling with budget cuts, and they are always incredibly painful, literally tearing apart the fabric of school communities. Due to this year’s projected budget cuts, hundreds of pink slips have already gone out to district teachers, Principals, and other staff for next year. The Principal of a high school with over 50% free lunch students has told me that the school’s budget for next year has been cut by 12%, and that the school may have to eliminate so many sections of required courses that the remaining classes will have to be conducted lecture-hall style. If this were to occur, it is clear which students would suffer the most – it would be the low income students. When class size rises and support programs and staff are eliminated, middle class families have the resources to provide outside help – an algebra tutor, for example. Lower income students must rely on the resources provided at school, and as those dry up, they are left with…nothing.
It is to prevent this kind of wholesale layoff of teachers and staff, and decimation of school programs, that the Superintendent chose to freeze the Prop H money. In the worst case scenario, if the Governor’s May revise of the budget does not show a brighter picture for SF, these funds may be needed to help stave off the most devastating cuts to our schools’ academic programs.
No matter how well-intentioned, it is a mistake for school food advocates to focus on the school nutrition program in a vacuum. Better school food and better nourished students are important to better academic achievement, but these improvements cannot come at the expense of educational programs. How does any student benefit from an improved cafeteria experience if it comes at the expense of having to learn US History in a class of 65 instead of 35? It is shameful that our state legislators (and especially the Republicans who reportedly have signed a pledge to vote against ANY tax increases no matter how dire the budget forecast) have allowed this situation to develop, but it is equally important that those who want to work to improve the school experience for low income students grasp the whole picture, not just one small part of it.
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