Education Week - July 10, 2013 - 19

EDUCATION WEEK
USDA Sets Final Rules
On School Snack Foods
By Nirvi Shah
Long-awaited rules that regulate
the fat, salt, sugar, and calories
in snacks and vending machine
foods sold in schools have
been released by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture.
The rules issued June 27 will
take effect during the 2014-15
school year or sooner, if districts
choose. Nutrition advocates had
been pressing the USDA to issue
the rules in June. Any later, and
they wouldn’t have taken effect
until the 2015-16 school year.
The new rules are the first up-
date to school snack regulations
since the 1970s. The existing rules
only limited “foods of minimal nutritional
value,” which didn’t keep
candy bars; snack cakes; and sugary,
vitamin-fortified sports drinks
from being regulated, said Margo
Wootan, the director of nutrition
policy at the Center for Science in
the Public Interest, a Washingtonbased
advocacy group.
Despite some high hopes for the
rules, which come on the heels of
stricter rules for school lunches,
they won’t completely wipe out
sodas, chips, or sweets from
schools. But they will make a dent.
“Millions of students currently
have widespread access to snacks
and beverages that are high in
sugar, fat, and salt, but limited
access to nutritious options such
as fruits and vegetables in school
stores, snack bars, and vending
machines,” said Jessica Donze
Black, the director of the Kids’ Safe
and Healthful Foods Project, also a
Washington-based advocacy group.
“With many students consuming
up to half of their daily calories
at school,” she said, “these
new standards represent the kind
of positive change we need to help
reduce obesity rates among children
and teens.”
Many of the rules are adapted
from those that were originally
proposed by the USDA, which received
about 250,000 comments.
What happens if schools don’t
comply? In a phone briefing with
reporters, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Tom Vilsack said he hopes
schools do, though there aren’t explicit
penalties if they don’t, unlike
the rules for the school lunch and
breakfast programs.
“It’s not about carrots and
sticks,” he said, then paused. “Well
I guess it is about carrots.”
Mr. Vilsack said he hopes and
believes the rules will be embraced
because, combined with
lunch and breakfast regulations,
they send a consistent message
to students and address the same
problems—hunger and obesity.
The changes will make “the
healthy choice the easy choice for
all students, no matter where they
live in America,” said Mary Story,
a professor of epidemiology and
community health at the University
of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Closer Look
Some specifics:
•All snacks and vending machine
foods must be fruits, vegetables,
dairy products, protein foods, or
whole-grain-rich foods, or combination
food that includes at least a
quarter cup of fruits or vegetables.
•For the first two years after the
standards take effect, foods qualify
if items contain at least 10 percent
of a nutrient designated as a
public-health concern for children.
Those nutrients include calcium,
potassium, and vitamin D. After
that, items fortified with those
nutrients won’t be allowed, Ms.
n
JULY 10, 2013 www.edweek.org
n
19
A student reaches for a package
of apple slices at a Norfolk, Va.,
high school. New federal
snack-food rules for schools
could make healthy options like
these more commonplace.
Wootan said. “Companies won’t
be able to just fortify snacks with
cheap nutrients to qualify them as
healthy; all school foods will have
to contain ―some fruit, vegetables,
whole grains, or another healthy
food component,” she said.
•Any snack or side dish would
be limited to 200 calories. Entrées
sold individually would be limited
to 350 calories.
•Snacks could have no more than
230 milligrams of sodium; that cap
would drop to 200 milligrams of
sodium for the 2016-17 school year.
Entrée items must have no more
than 480 milligrams of sodium, unless
those items are already part of
regular school meals.
•With some exceptions, items
can get no more than 35 percent of
their calories from fat and no more
than 10 percent from saturated fat.
Trans fats are banned.
•Total sugar must be no more
than 35 percent by weight, except
for dried fruits or vegetables.
•Items sold as entrées in school
lunches won’t have to meet those
rules—which was a concern for
some school nutrition advocates.
•All schools can sell water,
carbonated water, plain low-fat
milk, flavored or unflavored fatfree
milk and soy milk, and juices
made only of fruits and vegetables.
•High schools can sell all of
those drinks as well as caffeinated
sodas as large as 12 ounces, but the
drinks cannot have more than 60
calories. Full-calorie sports drinks
will be banned. Schools can also
sell flavored and carbonated water
drinks that have fewer than five
calories per eight-ounce serving.
•After reviewing comments, the
USDA decided it won’t allow side
dishes, such as french fries or chips
served as part of a regular school
meal, to be sold a la carte unless
they meet all of the requirements.
•As originally proposed, the
standards won’t apply to occasional
school fundraising events
or during evening and after-school
activities. States get to decide exactly
what that means.
The School Nutrition Associa-
tion, the Oxon Hill, Md., organization
that represents school cafeteria
managers, said the new rules
come at a tricky time.
“School meal programs are already
in the midst of a sea of
change as cafeterias work to meet
new school breakfast and lunch
standards and encourage students
to try the healthier choices,” said
the group’s president, Sandra Ford.
Her organization plans to work
with the USDA and Congress so
that the snack rules “do not present
undue burdens on school menu
planners and students,” she said.
Scan this tag with your
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to read the new school
snack rules at
www.edweek.org/links.
Civil Rights Office Proposes Deeper Dig on Discipline Data
By Nirvi Shah
The next federal collection of school-re-
lated civil rights data could probe U.S. districts
more deeply than the last go-round
on how students are disciplined—including
how many pre-K pupils are spanked—and
whether bullies harassed classmates for their
presumed religion or sexual orientation.
The U.S. Department of Education’s office
for civil rights asked for public comment in
the June 21 Federal Register on those and
other questions it hopes to ask during the
2013-14 and 2015-16 school years.
About every two years since 1968, the civil
rights office has collected data from a selection
of school districts to monitor and enforce
civil rights laws. The 2009-10 version
captured information on about 85 percent of
public school students in the country, and the
2011-12 iteration, which just wrapped up,
took on all districts and schools nationwide.
The 2009-10 version zeroed in on school
discipline and climate issues, asking districts
how students were disciplined, including
whether by suspension, expulsion, or corporal
punishment. Schools had to report how
the punishment was meted out and break
those figures down by students’ race, gender,
and disability. The information became public
last year for the first time. (See Education
Week, April 7, 2012.)
But some civil rights and education groups
wanted more details on the data points. They
could get their wish if the proposed changes
are adopted. The proposal has to go through a
60-day public-comment period, revisions, another
30-day comment period, and the White
House Office of Management and Budget before
becoming final.
Questions Added
Some of the new questions the Education
Department wants to ask—generally disaggregated
by race, sex, disability status, and
English-proficiency status—include:
•How many allegations of harassment or
bullying of K-12 students were based on perceptions
about sexual orientation or religion?
(An Education Department spokesman said
that question would not give schools the right
to ask about a victim’s sexual orientation or
religion but would focus instead on the “likely
motive of the alleged harasser.”)
•How many students ages 3 to 5 in pre-
school received corporal punishment?
•How many times were students in pre-
school through 12th grade corporally punished?
(That question would go beyond an
existing one that collects information about
how many students were spanked: It would
find out how many students were repeatedly
corporally punished.)
•How many school days did students miss,
collectively, because they were suspended?
•Does the district offer full- or part-day
kindergarten because of state law, and is
there any cost to parents?
•How many students took an Advanced
Placement exam of any kind, including one
taken in a foreign language?
•How many 7th graders took Algebra 1?
How many passed?
•How many school psychologists, social
> > The RULES FOR ENGAGEMENT blog tracks news and trends on this issue. www.edweek.org/go/rulesforengagement
workers, security guards, school resource
officers, and sworn law-enforcement officers
are on staff?
•How many of the following incidents
would trigger disciplinary action, including
referrals to law enforcement and arrests:
robbery with a weapon, including a firearm
or explosive device, or without a weapon; a
physical attack or fight with or without a
weapon; rape or attempted rape; incidents
of sexual battery other than rape; possession
of a firearm or explosive; whether students,
faculty, or staff members died as a result of a
murder at school; whether there was an incident
at the school that involved a shooting?
Some of the 2009-10 data weren’t very accurate,
even though superintendents had to
certify the information as accurate before
transmitting it to the Education Department.
But the spokesman said that the 2011-12
collection built in additional steps to ensure
better-quality data, including giving districts
time to adjust the information provided after
a federal review, and that those efforts would
be enhanced in 2013-14 and 2015-16.
Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot/AP-File

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Education Week - July 10, 2013

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