Alliance designed to offer more healthy options to students
In an effort to provide healthier food choices to students, Dallas ISD has joined with five of the largest school districts in the country to build a coalition to drive food costs down and quality up, ultimately giving students healthier options for school meals.
School districts from New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Orlando and Dallas united to form the Urban School Food Alliance. Through this first-ever alliance, the group, which procures more than $530 million in food and food supplies annually, aims to use its purchasing power to help drive down costs of food and supplies and to have vendors reformulate menu items to ensure that students continue to receive delicious and nutritious meals daily that exceed USDA guidelines. The school districts in the alliance served more than 460 million meals during the 2011-2012 school year. That’s 2,565,500 meals daily.
“Being involved in this innovative partnership will strengthen our ability to offer healthier options to our students as well as provide an opportunity to share innovative best practices that will improve our efficiencies,” said Dora Rivas, Executive Director, Dallas ISD Food and Child Nutrition Services.
The Urban School Food Alliance first met last summer in Denver and has since met regularly by tele-conference before today’s in-person meeting in Miami. The food services directors from each of the school districts share and review menu items to ensure that they provide access to meals that meet the following nutrient recommendations: whole grain products, low fat dairy, fresh produce and lean protein that when prepared are calorie conscious, and low in fat, sugar and sodium. In addition to creating a purchasing powerhouse, the coalition is working to be more ecological by looking for alternatives to poly-styrene trays.
To show solidarity in providing healthy meals, the Urban School Food Alliance will be serving the same lunch at all six school districts on Wednesday, March 20, 2013. The menu includes savory roasted chicken, brown rice with seasoned black or red beans, steamed green broccoli, fresh seasonal fruit and milk.
In recent years, the school districts have implemented innovative ways to provide access to school meals including expanded options for reaching more students with breakfast on campus as well as supper after school in order to meet the needs of students. In some of the districts, close to 90 percent of the student body qualifies for free and reduced price meals as a significant number of families live in poverty. In Dallas ISD 88.4 percent of the student populations qualifies for free or reduced lunch.
