Conejo Valley Unified School District

Child Nutrition Services Department

Challenges, Opportunities

and Moving Forward!

Sandy Curwood, RDN, MSDirector, Child Nutrition Services

School Food• School is an ideal setting to promote

health because of the amount of time

that children spend at school each day.

• School meals support nutrition by

offering healthy meals served by caring

staff with education reinforcement

environment (marketing materials) and

modeling healthy behavior.

Child Nutrition Services:

Establishment and Oversight

• The National School Lunch, Breakfast

and Afterschool Snack Program

• USDA

• CDE

•VC Environmental Health

CVUSD CNS Challenges:

• Budget : 2013 started with 400,000 of debt from

previous year ( and about the same amount for past

several years)

• Lack of implementation of WP and HHKKA 2010

• Limited facilities at several school sites

• Lack of employee training and

staff development

• CDE Surprise audit during summer 2013

• Upcoming AR audit in Spring 2014

BEFORE:

CURRENT:

Applied for 30 Salad bars – commitment for 4 to date

What’s in the works!

• CDE audit follow up with all school sites

• Wellness Policy committee to adopt policies

• Have received $8400 from Alameda COE

for recipe development

Healthy Food Promotion – October Pears

Central Kitchen- Mo’ Beans!

Conejo ES Bring a Parent to Lunch Day

Catered DLT meeting and

D.O. Halloween Holiday luncheon

LOOKING FORWARD

• Farm-to-School – Local Procurement, HOTM, link to School Gardens

• Scratch and Speed-Scratch Cooking for Secondary Schools and Central Kitchen

• Focus on Healthy and Fresh

• Decrease packaging and pre-wrapped

• Staff Development for CNS Staff

• Equipment Assessment

• Implementation of Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act

• Successful CDE Review!

Menu Planning

• Menu planning begins with what we want to

accomplish:

• Healthy meals students will enjoy

• Comply with the NSLP guidelines

• Meet budget parameters

• Staff training and development

• Facilities and Equipment

Salad bar to enhance vegetable subgroup

offerings• Salad bars can offer vegetable subgroups

• Fruit

• Seasonal crops

• Marketing opportunity with signage

• Educational materials

• Align with the other meal components

• Harvest of the month recipes

• Specialty salad

My Plate: My Tray

Recipe Development

• Regional, Fresh, Seasonal ingredients

• Kid tested recipes

• USDA Foods (commodity)- stretch food dollars

Seasonal and Cultural Recipes

• Take base recipe and add cultural components

Plant Part Salad- Connects to the Classroom

Benefits of Using Local Produce

• Sustainability- Seasonality

• Increased varieties of crops

• Keeping food dollars in our local economy

• Less transportation reduces fuel (carbon

footprint)

• Less packaging

• Preserves open space

• Connects you with your community

• Good marketing tool

Benefits of Scratch Cooking

• Health:

�Control Content of Sugar, Salt, and

Sodium.

• Known Ingredients

• Better Taste

• Environmental Benefits:

�Less Packaging

�Use Local Produce

The Opportunity: Our Work

• Making School Lunch the “Meal of Choice”• Providing access to Healthy Foods• Providing learning opportunities for students to make healthy

choices.• Giving children hands-on experiences with fresh fruits and

vegetables.• Teaching children the agricultural foundation of their food.• Building a relationship between the school community and

local agriculture.• Supporting parents as they promote healthy choices with

their children.• Promoting buying in-season and local sustainably grown

produce.

Conclusion

• Promoting “healthy eating is entirely

consistent with the fundamental

mission of schools: educating young

people to become healthy, productive

citizens who can make meaningful

contributions to society.”

Weschsler, H., McKenna, M., Lee, S., & Dietz, W. (2004, December). Role of schools in preventing childhood

obesity. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/physicalactivity/pdf/roleofschools_obesity.pdf