Lean funding, fatty food
School districts across Long Island, which collect nearly $7 billion each year in taxes, offer lunch menus dominated by pizza, chicken nuggets, burgers and fries despite a nationwide call to fight childhood obesity.
School food service directors say they could serve healthier meals with more money. Yet virtually none of Long Island's local school taxes help finance lunch programs.
Instead, cafeterias are expected to pay for themselves -- the only major school program that bears that burden. To make ends meet, most school lunch directors sell snacks such as cookies and chips.
With taxes paying for everything from artificial turf to computer labs, some experts say food programs, which play a role in children's education, shouldn't have to be self-supporting. "We don't expect a math teacher to generate a profit," said Kate Adamick, an attorney and chef who consults with school food services nationwide. "We don't expect an English teacher to generate a profit."
Long Island is not alone. Like the rest of the nation, local school food programs battle tight finances, lax and outdated federal standards and a variety of cultural forces -- most notably, the preference of kids for fast food. Some districts navigate those challenges better than others.
Across Long Island, schools have made gradual efforts to improve their food since the federal government ordered districts nationwide to develop wellness policies starting in the 2006-2007 school year. Some districts have limited what snacks can be sold in cafeterias, ordered teachers to stop rewarding students with candy, or banned cupcakes at birthday parties. But most cafeterias have seen few sweeping changes in recent years for the 200,000 students who eat school lunch meals daily.
Financial and nutritional documents obtained from 76 of Long Island's 124 districts, visits to about 20 schools, a dietitian's analysis of food in 10 districts, and interviews with dozens of experts and school food professionals, found:
In the 2006-2007 school year, 14 districts contributed local tax dollars to their school food programs. Money from vending machine contracts in schools virtually always was spent on other areas, such as sports and scholarships.Long Island schools on average charged full-paying students $1.66 last year, according to a Newsday survey. Some school lunch directors said $3 would be more realistic to serve healthy food.
The sale of snacks -- which range from ice cream to French fries -- can account for 50 percent of a food program's revenue.
A registered dietitian's review of menus and nutritional information in 10 Long Island districts found mixed results: Nearly all served food higher in sodium and trans fat than national recommended guidelines, while exceeding standards for protein, fiber, vitamin C and calcium.
In districts with higher percentages of kids who receive free and reduced-price lunches, students tend to eat healthier because more of them get the standard, portion-controlled meal and buy fewer snacks. Because the districts receive government reimbursements of about $2.62 per meal, much higher than what most districts charge for a full-price meal, they have fewer money woes.
Processed foods that require less labor to prepare and are high in fat and salt dominate menus in Long Island school cafeterias. Pizza was served at nearly 40 percent of school lunches last year. Chicken nuggets and other processed, breaded chicken products were offered at nearly a third of meals, and hamburgers or cheeseburgers at nearly one-quarter of meals.
Most school districts here -- like their counterparts nationwide -- expect lunch programs to pay their own way. Some give them subsidies, usually to cover budget shortfalls.
Long Beach is one of the few school districts that has repeatedly subsidized its food program in recent years. Anticipating increased labor costs and another deficit last school year, Superintendent Bob Greenberg said the district gave the program $175,000. The money mostly paid for employee health benefits and equipment, including a state-of-the-art pizza oven and a $40,000 self-cooking center.
Food service director Kevin Hannon said the center -- a combination steamer that can bake, roast, steam, blanch and poach -- makes healthier food and allows more cooking from scratch. "This is the latest in technology," Hannon said, adding that it also can prepare healthier, less oily fries.
Long Beach included $250,000 for the food program in this year's budget, which Hannon said will pay for a computerized register system and allow for the purchase of more fresh ingredients -- including romaine instead of iceberg lettuce, and leafy greens such as spinach.
Superintendents acknowledge district budgets could subsidize school food programs, but they expect cafeterias to be self-sufficient.
"Your food service has a revenue stream, which your other programs don't," said John Richman, superintendent of Roslyn schools.
Typically, when a district chooses to subsidize its food program, it is plugging a deficit. That was the case in Roslyn in 2006-07 when the food program received $25,000 from the district, Richman said.
"I guess the mindset is that, well, food is the responsibility of the parent and it's subsidized for the kids who need the support."
If a district funds school food, he asked, "Where does that end then? If a child comes in without an adequate coat, should the school buy them coats and boots just because their parents pay high taxes?"
Island Park's budget allocated $50,000 for school food in 2006-07 mainly because the small district's limited purchasing power leads to financial difficulties, said superintendent Edward Price.
The main priority, he said, is to provide balanced meals that meet government standards. Last week's offerings there included pizza, chicken nuggets, and hot dogs. "You can debate whether it's a good meal," he said. "The nutritional people who want salads and all fresh fruit, are we going to be able to meet their desires at these kinds of prices? No, that's not going to happen. That doesn't mean children are not getting a good meal."
If taxpayers don't feel their children are being fed appropriately, he said, "they have the option to brown-bag it."
Some parents agree, but others want to see some district funds go toward making food healthier.
"I think the quality of the food presented needs to be of greatest concern," said Jennifer Donovan, whose daughter is in the seventh grade at Finley Junior High School in Huntington. She said she wants her daughter to be able to get more fresh fruits and vegetables at school. "But let's face it, they just cost more," she said, adding that some contribution from the district would help.
Allan Gerstenlauer, superintendent of Longwood schools, said there's never been a need to fund his district's food program. He said it's important to separate food programs to protect them from budget proposals that could be rejected by voters.
"If school districts were to take on the task of providing meals to children, that would inevitably drive the costs of education even higher," he said. "The school lunch program has been run as a self-sustaining operation for many, many years and it seems to work fairly well that way."
But food service directors say it's not working that well and more money needs to come from somewhere.
The New York School Nutrition Association, which represents 3,500 food service directors statewide, believes the government should completely subsidize school food, allowing all children to eat for free.
"We want to be part of the school day, just as math, science and language classes," said executive director Carol Beebe.
She said food service directors understand district budgets might be stretched too thin to provide substantial subsidies. But she said if districts want to see food improve, administrators should consider offering financial support.
"If you have high expectations of your program and it's not making ends meet," she said, "then you need to look at subsidizing your program."
That's what West Babylon did this year, giving its food service program $75,000 -- the first time the district ever provided a subsidy.
With rising costs of food and labor, and urgent calls for combating childhood obesity, "We suspect there's going to have to be some money in future budgets," said Dominick Palma, assistant superintendent for curriculum and student services.
The subsidy is helping the cafeteria program break even without relying as heavily on the sale of junk food. "I don't have to resort to selling high-fat and high-sodium snacks, which are the moneymakers," said food service director Adrianne Goldenbaum.
As cafeteria workers prepared the lunch line at West Babylon Junior High School last school year, Goldenbaum was in her office, crunching numbers. White receipt paper spat out as she calculated what she could spend on a meal given the $2.53 in government reimbursements she got last year for a meal served to a student who receives free lunch.
One dollar and 40 cents for labor. Eight cents for materials and supplies. "Trays, plastic forks, soap for the pots," she sighed. Four cents for equipment maintenance. Five cents for miscellaneous expenses.
For the food itself, a grand total of 96 cents.
And when Goldenbaum's expenses were deducted from the $1.66 that districts charged on average for a full-price meal on Long Island last year, plus the 29-cent government reimbursement for a full-price meal, there was less than 40 cents left over for food.
Goldenbaum said the $75,000 from the district's budget this year made her feel that administrators value making food healthier, but the amount won't lead to any dramatic improvements.
"It's going to just help the program survive at least another year," she said, "because of increased costs in all areas."
Raising the price of a meal is difficult when those decisions are in the hands of elected school boards, food service directors say privately, for fear of angering board members.
"We, as the food service directors, can't just walk in there and say, 'This is it, we're raising prices,'" Beebe said. "You are lucky to be getting a quarter from the school boards."
Lawrence Gross, a Great Neck trustee, said boards are protecting parents. "I don't think that concern is purely political, that we're afraid of being voted down," he said. "It's purely for keeping costs down."
Some board members say they would only approve incremental hikes.
"Depending on the quality of the food, I think 25 cents, maybe 30 cents increase, that range would be acceptable," said Ron Wayne, a Deer Park trustee. "Anything over that I would probably not vote for." Deer Park is one of about 50 Long Island districts that contract food service out to a private company, such as Aramark.
Price hikes can produce results.
When Jane Steigerwarld started running Islip's food service five years ago, she convinced the school board that the best way to improve lunch would be to raise prices from $1.60 to $2 at the high school -- in the upper 25 percent of prices charged by Long Island schools. That helped bring offerings such as tomato basil cheese salad, broccoli pinwheels and cranberry Jell-O made with real cranberries. Participation rates rose.
The high school price was raised again, to $2.50. Steigerwarld, who retired in June, said she thinks the ideal price would be $3.
Labor costs can be daunting, making up an average of 51 percent of a food program's expenses, according to about 30 budgets obtained by Newsday. That's one reason so many items are processed foods, with fewer items made from scratch.
"The more things I make from scratch, the more labor hours I have," said Elena Lynch-Dobert, food service director at Rocky Point. "I can't go out and buy expensive, organic food. You have to balance."
Lynch-Dobert stopped at the lunch line one day last fall to see how the three-bean salad was doing. Made with green, kidney and navy beans, it was the most labor-intensive item on the menu, one she was trying to get students to take.
Many seventh-graders having lunch in the Sayville Middle School cafeteria last school year munched on tortilla chips accompanied by a cup of bright orange cheese. "The kids go gaga over the nacho cheese and chips," said head cook Cheryl Heckle, pointing to a dispenser that pumps out the cheese.
A few girls at one table opted for two chocolate chip cookies each and a bottle of Snapple iced tea.
To help break even, almost all school districts sell snacks -- cookies, chips, drinks, a second slice of pizza, a side order of fries. Those items and meals sold to adults are considered "a la carte" sales.
In two-thirds of the 42 districts that provided complete financial information to Newsday, a la carte sales made up more than 25 percent of revenue in 2006-07. In Garden City, slightly more than 70 percent of sales revenue comes from student a la carte purchases. It's more than 50 percent in Roslyn and more than 60 percent of total revenue in Bellmore-Merrick.
Snacks, often laden with sugar, fat or salt, have no place in school cafeterias, nutritionists say.
"I would love for school cafeterias to be a model for nutrition," said Steigerwarld, a registered dietitian herself. But, she said, "We can't survive without our a la carte sales. We're forced to sell snacks."
A la carte purchases by students make up nearly 25 percent of Islip's total revenue.
The USDA does not allow foods of "minimal nutritional value" to be sold during meal times. That rule, which has not been changed since 1979, does not address fat, salt and sugar. Soda can't be sold; neither can seltzer. But items such as chips, cookies and sports drinks can, which doctors and nutritionists find perplexing. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit specializing in food and nutrition issues, calls the rule "woefully out of date."
While most states have snack policies, experts argue they should be more comprehensive. The Center for Science in the Public Interest's School Foods Report Card for 2007 evaluated state-level nutritional policies. Only two states -- Oregon and Kentucky -- scored higher than a B-plus.
Twenty-three states have stronger policies than New York, which got a D-plus for having only one policy. New York's rule prohibits the sale of food of minimal nutritional value and all candy from the beginning of the school day until the end of the last scheduled meal. It's a "very weak" rule, said Margo Wootan, the center's director of nutrition policy, compared to states with all-day standards limiting saturated fat, trans fats, salt and sugar.
Experts say the meal itself -- the basis of the National School Lunch program, which began in 1946 as a way to give schoolchildren complete, nutritious meals -- also needs attention.
"As we're getting more and more of the junk food out of the schools," Wootan said, "we need to go back and improve the quality of the meal."
But as they strive to improve nutrition, food service directors say they must consider kids' tastes and not alienate the students they are serving. The amount of government reimbursements a district receives is tied to participation rates -- the number of students who buy the standard meal. So there's intense pressure to keep children coming through the lunch line.
This leads to what one upstate food service director calls "stealth nutrition" -- tricking students into healthy eating instead of teaching them to make healthy choices.
Students in Sayville, for example, don't know that the bologna and taco meat are actually made with turkey, said food service director Linda Horrigan.
Hamlin said she understands the fear of losing participation, but added, "If all the food was healthy, the kids would be hungry and they'd eat it."
It's not that simple.
Ashley Moscato, an Islip High School junior last school year, doesn't care about healthy food. She would rather eat at Taco Bell or McDonald's. "You only live once," she said.
Anthony Nieto, a Southampton eighth-grader, shuns his school's sweet potato fries. "They look gross," he said.
In the end, Rocky Point's Lynch-Dobert said, the challenge is changing students' tastes. On the fall day three-bean salad was served, she watched the bustle of students making their way through the line. She frowned as students bypassed the small plastic cups. Only 18 of the 28 containers prepared were taken.
