Mayor Newsom, please help green our school lunches

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July 13, 2:00 PM

by Caroline Grannan, S.F. Education Examiner

 

 

The mayor could make a further big difference in the diet of San Francisco's young people by supporting expanded salad bars in SFUSD schools. 

In 2007-08, the city gave SFUSD $514,000 to be used for opening and operating salad bars in 25 schools. In the proposed 2008-'09 city budget, SFUSD still receives $234,000 from the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families to help maintain the existing salad bars, but that's all.

This represents a cut of almost 55% from last year's funding, and makes it financially challenging for the district to open any more salad bars at the more than 75 schools which still do not have one. (In my view, these are expenses that the city – not school budgets -- should be picking up. Feeding the community's kids isn't an educational expense – it's a community commitment to young people's health.)

Meanwhile, in the last couple of weeks it became clear that the DCYF budget contained about $3.2 million more than had been anticipated. As previously posted here, the mayor's office swooped in at the last minute with some proposed allocations for that money that ignited controversy because of the lack of public input, and the vague and indirect benefit that students and schools might reap from most of those items.

This would have been a perfect opportunity for Newsom to propose restoring the $280,000 of funding for more salad bars. I hope the goal of serving better food to our city's poorest children hasn't fallen off his priority list.

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