Education Week - June 4, 2014 - 10

Battle Lines Drawn on Waivers From School Lunch Rules
By Evie Blad
A fight over food erupted in Washington
when a U.S. House of Representatives
panel proposed a measure
that would let some schools
take a year off from heightened
nutritional standards for student
meals.
The latest chapter of debate over
the implementation of the standards
created under the Healthy,
Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 had
been rumored for weeks.
The School Nutrition Association,
which campaigned for the waiver
language, argued that the meal
standards have been difficult and
costly for districts to apply and have
led to an excess of discarded food.
Advocates for the standards, including
several large public health
organizations, argued that the need
to confront childhood obesity is too
important to back away from the
healthy meals rollout, and that implementation
concerns are best addressed
through flexibility in drafting
and applying regulations, not
through congressional intervention.
In a rare political move, first lady
Michelle Obama, who has made
fighting childhood obesity the centerpiece
of her public platform, also
joined in the debate. She vowed to
fight the proposal in a guest editorial
for The New York Times and at a
meeting with a panel of school lunch
leaders last week.
"The last thing we can afford to do
right now is play politics with our
kids' health," Mrs. Obama said at
the May 27 meeting in Washington.
She called the waiver effort "unacceptable
to me, not just as first lady,
but also as a mother."
The nutrition standards have
been implemented gradually since
they were adopted in 2012. They require
schools to increase the availability
of fruits, vegetables, whole
grains, and fat-free and low-fat milk
in school meals; to reduce the levels
of sodium, saturated fat, and trans
fat; and to "meet the nutrition needs
of school children within their calorie
requirements."
Opt-Out Process
The contentious waiver proposal
came in the form of language included
in the Republican-led House
Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee's
budget proposal on May 19.
The waiver language survived an
attempt by some House Democrats,
led by California Rep. Sam Farr, to
amend it out of the bill before it was
passed by the full House appropriations
committee May 29.
The language directs the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, which
administers the school lunch and
breakfast programs, to create a process
to allow schools to opt out of the
heightened meal standards for the
2014-15 school year if they can demonstrate
"a net loss from operating a
food-service program for a period of
at least six months that begins on or
after July 1, 2013."
In response to the House proposal,
the Senate appropriations committee
on May 22 amended its agriculture
appropriations bill to address
some school meal concerns without
providing a method for districts to
opt out all together.
The Senate language would require
the usda to stop a ratchetingup
of sodium restrictions pending
further scientific research, to evaluate
products available for school
food providers to comply with more
stringent whole-grain requirements,
and to suggest alternatives
when products are lacking. It would
also require the usda to report back
within 90 days after the bill's passage
with a plan to provide training
and technical assistance to schools
to reduce plate waste, comply with
nutrition requirements, and maintain
participation in the National
School Lunch Program.
"To produce a blanket waiver and
to back off entirely would be unacceptable,"
said Sen. Tom Harkin, an
Iowa Democrat who helped create
the amendment language.
The House and Senate must now
decide if they will negotiate a compromise
between the approaches.
Dueling Advocates
The White House has taken a
strong stance against the House
proposal. Press Secretary Jay Carney
started his press briefing last
week with a statement that said
the move "replaces the judgement
of doctors and nutritionists with the
opinions of politicians."
In at least a half dozen media conBLOGS
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Parents, L.A. Form Partnership,
Avoiding Parent-Trigger Law
| K-12 PARENTS AND THE PUBLIC | A partnership agreement
brokered between an elementary school parent union and
the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve student
achievement is being hailed as the first-of-its-kind for the
nation's second-largest school system.
Members of the parent union at West Athens Elementary
School and schools Superintendent John Deasy signed the
agreement last month.
West Athens parents opted to avoid using the state's
so-called parent-trigger law, which allows them to petition
to force the district to implement sweeping changes at
chronically low-performing schools.
Yet the mere existence of California's Parent
Empowerment Act, and the contentious struggle some
schools experienced using the parent-petition process,
may have influenced the negotiations with West Athens'
parents, even if it was unspoken.
Gabe Rose, deputy executive director of Parent
Revolution, a parent-trigger advocacy group, said the
partnership signals an "interesting shift" regarding how
Los Angeles administrators interact with organized
parents. Parent Revolution helped organize and support
the parent union.
The agreement calls for a $300,000 investment to
hire more staff, including a school psychologist, a parttime
psychiatric social worker, attendance officers,
and playground aides. In addition to more professional
development for teachers, the plan includes strategies to
improve Common Core State Standards implementation.
Negotiations between the parent union and the school's
principal and district officials began last fall. Rosalinda
Lugo, an instructional director for the district, said parents
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 4, 2014 | www.edweek.org
received training and worked with the school's teachers
and principal to discuss their concerns and goals. Parents
observed classrooms to learn how instruction was being delivered.
Throughout the eight-month process, Lugo said a
mutual understanding of the school's needs was developed.
-KARLA SCOON REID
School in U.K. Plans to End
Early Classes for Older Students
| TIME AND LEARNING | Feeling lucky because you work for a
school system with a relatively late start time-say, 8:30 a.m.?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but a private school in the United
Kingdom recently announced that, next year, it will start the
school day at 1:30 p.m. for students in 6th form (two years
equivalent to grade 12 in the United States plus a grade 13
year). Classes will last until 7 p.m. Students in earlier grades at
Hampton Court House will continue to arrive at 9 a.m.
The school in Surrey was inspired to make the change by
research from the University of Oxford's Sleep and Circadian
Neuroscience Institute, Headmaster Guy Holloway told the
U.K.'s Daily Mail.
Paul Kelley, an honorary research associate at Oxford, and
Clark Lee, a senior law and policy analyst at the Center for
Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland,
recently released a report arguing for later school start times.
Older teenagers are biologically programmed to go to sleep
later and wake up later than adults, they explained.
Other British schools that have pushed back start times to 10
a.m. or later have seen improvements in student concentration
levels and test scores, according to the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, late-start crusaders have set more modest
goals in the United States, with districts thinking hard about
starting the school day an hour or so later.
The Fairfax County, Va., school board, for example, recently
approved four later-start options for community discussion
that range from 7:50 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. Currently, high school
starts at 7:20 a.m., requiring some students to get on buses
as early as 5:45 a.m., which one board member described as
"inhumane," The Washington Post reported.
While the school board is committed to starting the school
day later, having passed a resolution in 2012 promising to
make a change, some board members are wary of the 9:15
a.m. option, worrying that it would interfere with after-school
activities.
The proposals would cost $2.8 million to $7.6 million to
implement, mostly due to bus purchases.
-SAMANTHA STAINBURN
Common-Core Conspiracies May
Be Muffling Real Issues
| TEACHING NOW | America, we've had the wool pulled over
our eyes.
All this time we've been debating the Common Core
State Standards, we thought we were talking about
lofty ideas like achievement, pedagogy, curriculum, and
learning. And there's been healthy, reasonable cynicism
here and there, too.
But suddenly, I realized what a scam it all is: The
common-core standards are about profits-the profits of
America's leading butter-alternative companies.
The companies currently field-testing exams aligned
to the common core? Smarter Balanced. Come on,
people-it's right there in the name! And oh, yes, there's
the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Careers, or parcc. Please-more like Parkay. This
plot has been spreading out faster than Land o' Lakes
on toast, leaving the opinions of the country's people
margarinalized. And it feels like a kick in the "dairyière."
Still, some people out there are fighting the good fight,
France
Singapore
Ecuador
Dolores Ochoa/AP
Wong Maye/AP
Francois Mori/AP
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Education Week - June 4, 2014

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