Happy holidays to you and yours! Read on to learn about the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition bill, Dora Rivas and the exciting changes she's making in Dallas, the introduction of FOCUS Stakeholder Chats, a new way you can directly influence the future of school food, and more, plus updates on policy, news, and events.

Dora Rivas, Executive Director of Food and Child Nutrition Services at Dallas Independent School District (DISD), has been working in food service since 1978, was the first elected Hispanic president of the Texas School Food Service Association, and until July served as President of the School Nutrition Association. Based on this impressive level of experience, you might guess that very little in the world of school meals could surprise her.

Dora Rivas

But recently, after she and her staff added new daily vegetarian options to menus across the district, Rivas found herself pleasantly surprised: "Our black bean burgers, hummus and veggie plates, and natural peanut butter and banana sandwiches on whole grain bread have been a real hit," she says. "Participation for those menu items has been much better than anticipated. The kids who choose them really seem to appreciate having the options." Rivas notes that students throughout Dallas are taking a greater interest in eating healthy foods.

Rivas is also glad to discover how relatively painless it was to begin making some menu items from scratch, starting with sandwiches, sauces, and pasta bowls. The district's tactics include "speed scratch," combining convenience items together with fresh, unprocessed or lightly processed ingredients, which results in dishes that kids are more excited to eat. Cafeteria staff are now engaging in more cutting, chopping, and other new food prep skills. "It's been an educational process for us and for our cafeteria staff," she says. "Some of the staff are resistant to new menu items at first, but they start to feel encouraged once they introduce them and see that students are open to them."

At the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, Food and Child Nutrition Services sent an update to parents of DISD students, explaining all of the improvements and changes it had made since the previous school year.  >> For the rest of the story, click here to jump to the FOCUS blog >>

Who has questions?

Who has answers?

Who wants to brainstorm with their peers?

FOCUS and the CS Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State University want to play matchmaker!

Beginning in the new year, we are planning to hold a series of hour-long, facilitated conversations on topics of interest to school food service professionals and/or their district partners. We will distribute summaries of the calls and have them available for reference on our website. We piloted this work with an informal conversation earlier in the fall. We will be asking for your input in the new year, so put on your thinking caps!

Topics could include:

• How to stretch your funds to create nutritious and appealing cafeteria options
• How to make the most out of relationships with your partners
• Getting students to try/eat the more healthful menu options that are offered
• Helping school districts with roadblocks
• Salad bars: what works and what doesn't
• Positive PR for cafeteria changes

Please let us know if you would be interested in any of the topics above and if you have other topics you'd like to chat about. Once we have a number of prospective participants, we will schedule the call.

As we begin to consider preparations for the June 2011 Annual Meeting in Denver, FOCUS staff would like to invite interested stakeholders to join the specifications committee for the School Food Showcase that will take place at the meeting.

Participating in the committee is a wonderful opportunity to have your voice heard and to be a direct influence on standards and expectations for quality, provenance, nutrition, and other criteria for food products featured in the Showcase. These products and their representatives will be on hand for attendees to learn more about them and make connections for future working relationships. Last year, committee members were invaluable as they established criteria for chicken products and whole grain bread items.

Please email Program Associate Amy Rosenthal for more information about joining the School Food Showcase specifications committee.

Since the last newsletter, we've officially welcomed four long-time stakeholders as signers of the Stakeholder Pledge: NYC SchoolFood; its district partner City Harvest; Houston Independent School District; and the San Francisco Department of Health, the district partner of San Francisco Unified School District.

Congratulations. We're glad to have you on board!

This brings the total of pledge-signing FOCUS districts to 27, along with 20 district partners.

A selection of news stories and reports, many of which originally appeared in our weekly procurement change news round-up. It's posted each week on the School Food FOCUS blog.

>> Healthier school menus are not enough (Education News Colorado): Findings from the 3-year study of the Berkeley Unified School District's School Lunch Initiative conducted by the University of California at Berkeley are examined in the context of the school lunch reform efforts underway in Boulder Valley School District and FOCUS Learning Lab district Denver Public Schools (DPS). DPS Director of Food and Nutrition Services Leo Lesh discusses the focus on scratch cooking and offering choices in the district's program.

>> Seattle Public Schools partnering with farmers to make healthier lunches (Northwest Cable News): Director of Nutrition Services Eric Boutin of FOCUS district Seattle Public Schools and Randall Guzzardo, manager of the district's Central Kitchen, are featured in this positive report about its farm to school program.

>> Battling Childhood Obesity in the Inland Empire (University of California, Riverside): Riverside County Joint Health Coalition members discussed childhood obesity and examined some of the broader solutions as a part of the Randall Lewis Seminar Series. FOCUS district Riverside Unified (RUSD) director of nutrition services Rodney Taylor presented the district's "Farmers Market Salad Bar" program and best practices for implementing farm to school programs in elementary schools. Taylor's presentation is posted along with additional information about the seminar on the UC Riverside website.

>> Cereals' sugar content whittled (Twin Cities Pioneer Press): General Mills announced that all of its kids' cereals now contain 10 or fewer grams of sugar per serving and will continue to make reductions in a series of steps. The next milestone will be to hit single-digit levels in all cereals. However, Margo Wootan, a nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), noted that one serving of Trix, for example, weighs in at 32 grams -- 10 grams of sugar is still nearly one-third of its weight.

>> Speaker Quinn Announces FoodWorks New York (New York City Council): FoodWorks New York is a new effort by the City Council to produce the first-ever comprehensive plan to use NYC's food system to create jobs, improve public health, and protect the environment. The plan includes provisions for more fresh fruits and vegetables in NYC public schools. Its five goals are to improve the city's food infrastructure; create new and better jobs in the food industry; keep more local food dollars in the local economy; reduce diet-related diseases like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes; and reduce environmental damage from the production, transport, and consumption of food.

>> School Food Bicycle Tour (Sara Salo, MPH): Salo is organizing a self-supported bike ride across the country to advocate for healthier school meals. She aims to document the insight of young stakeholders and add their wisdom to the school lunch reform movement. The tour also plans to connect with family farms and organizations that work to promote public health. If you'd like to suggest that she visit your school food operation, a school within your district, or an organization you work for, email Sara.

>> New Report Highlights Changes Needed to Support Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in U.S. Elementary Schools (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation): A comprehensive new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Bridging the Gap program finds that elementary schools commonly offer their students junk food and soda, serve meals that are high in fat, and provide little time for physical education or recess. Findings are based on surveys of school administrators during the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years.