Pamela Anderson speaks at the school board.

Sometimes staying late at the LA Unified school board meetings has its benefits. Particularly when quirky things happen in only-in-LA moments.

About 8:45 p.m. Tuesday late into the meeting, most of the audience members had cleared out of the school board auditorium and the 200 or so protesters outside were gone. There were almost as many people up on the horseshoe dais as there were watching.

Board President Steve Zimmer kidded about seeming a bit loopy because his cold medicine was kicking in. Then, the school police officers stirred, the board members stopped talking and a blur of diverse people marched down the aisle of the auditorium.

Up front was blonde bombshell Pamela Anderson, looking as stunning as she did in her “Baywatch” days two decades ago. In a tight black top and flowered skirt, she brushed back her characteristic blonde locks and prepared herself to address the school board for the first time.

In the pressroom watching on closed-circuit TV, reporters were surprised and snickering about why she was there. The LA Unified communications team didn’t have any idea.

Along with the actress, there were TV journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell and 9-year-old actress Felix Hemstreet, as well as a triathlete, a cardiologist, a best-selling author, a dietician, a doctor of 40 years and Torre Washington, who bills himself as “a professional vegan bodybuilder.”

The circus of presenters was inspired by 14-year-old Lila Copeland from Paul Revere Middle School who wants to have a regular vegan option on the menu in the nation’s second-largest school district. It appeared she had an impact on the board, and she had already met with Laura Benavidez, of the district’s Food Services division, who seemed open to the idea.

“This school district is at the forefront of offering good nutritious food for the students, so we just want them to be aware of allowing vegan options for the students too and helping us have a healthy future for this planet,” Copeland said. “We want the district to provide a vegan option.”

The experts spewed statistics and anecdotes. They brought up methane caused by cows, the drought, global warming, childhood obesity and ethical reasons for being vegan. They talked about how eating meat can cause heart disease and strokes, they detailed the outmoded federal nutritional standards and brought in packets of vegan meal samples for each of the seven school board members prepared by plant-based protein company Gardein’s chef Jason Stefanko.

Anderson spoke for two minutes about milk and water and the United Nations. She said, “Kids today are appalled to learn that animals killed for cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets live in crowded dark filthy sheds by the thousands and are mutilated and slaughtered by having their throats slit while they’re still conscious.”

Lila met this week with Zimmer and fellow school board member Ref Rodriguez as well as with the food services officials. The district already has a “Meatless Mondays” program and has taken the lead in requiring antibiotic and hormone-free chicken and turkey and is considering inexpensive low-fat options created by student chefs. On the other hand, the most animated part of a school board meeting two weeks ago centered on bringing back chocolate milk.

“I’m impressed with what I’ve been told, but maybe I’m too old to change, maybe I’m not,” said 75-year-old board member George McKenna. “I’ve learned that everything I eat and love is not supposed to be healthy.”

McKenna, who grew up in New Orleans, confessed his love for po’boys and beignets and said he just ate a ham sandwich. “I’m hooked on meat and ice cream.” But, he added, “I’m enlightened, and you make the case for healthy children. At least I’ll think about what I eat. Maybe you’ll change our behaviors, and maybe mine.”

Zimmer quipped to his fellow board member, “We’ll go out for a veggie burger soon.”

It didn’t go unnoticed to the school board that young Lila brought together a virtual Who’s Who of vegan experts, including vegan cardiologist Dr. Kim Williams, Dr. Michael Klaper, Kawani Brown, Dr. Heather Shenkman, Sharon Palmer and others.

Of course, Anderson was a highlight, and although there wasn’t much of an audience, the school board meeting will be rebroadcast on Sunday morning at KLCS Television Channel 58 in between children’s shows such as “Dora the Explorer.” This time around, the show will feature an appearance by Pamela Anderson, and also a rant of a student earlier during Tuesday’s public comments that had a great deal of four-letter words while he described creating his own barber shop. Anderson’s talk is toward the end of the broadcast (at the 5:08:48 mark), which is now available on the LA Unified website.

“I’ve learned so much from these people,” Anderson told LA School Report. “These are the experts. This is my first time to speak to the LA school board, and I think it’s so important to teach children to be vegan.”

Anderson’s children went to schools in the Malibu school district, and she said she allowed her children to make their own choices. “As a mother, we are always trying to raise healthy kids, and this is one of the serious environmental problems. I’m here as a mom.”

Velez-Mitchell said she came as a journalist but felt she had to speak out about some of the food served at the district. “The food that is served in this school district causes cancer. Give them an option to choose foods that will not cause them cancer.”

Ultimately, the team offered to talk to any of the school board members. Zimmer quickly said, “I’m always happy to talk. And thank you for the samples, they were really good.”

The next step is to get a resolution from the school board, and Lila thinks that will happen.

Lila concluded: “No animal wants to die to become our food.”

Superintendent John Deasy banned chocolate and strawberry milk from the school menu five years ago after the school board voted it was too sugary for students.

But now LA Unified School Board President Steve Zimmer said he was concerned that there is a waste of a lot of milk that students are served but don’t drink.

“Kids really do want water, they don’t drink milk. Largely in high school they want water,” Zimmer said at a special board meeting Tuesday to discuss district finances. “I suspect the waste of milk is fairly phenomenal in high school.”

That was confirmed by Laura Benavidez, of LA Unified Food Services, who added that federal standards do not consider water to have any nutritional value, and therefore “that will be a direct cost to the district” if milk is replaced with water, she said. Benavidez said that school cafeteria managers have long agreed that students would drink more chocolate milk if it was brought back to the menu.

Board member Ref Rodriguez pointed out that there were many low-calorie and low-sugar alternatives for chocolate milk today that weren’t as available in 2011. Some charter schools serve flavored milk that is low fat.

“Let’s bring chocolate milk back!” declared board member Monica Ratliff, who pointed out that the decision to ban it was made before she joined the board.

In fact, only Zimmer and Monica Garcia were on the board at the time, and they both voted to ban flavored milk. Former board members Tamar Galatzan and Marguerite LaMotte voted against the ban, citing findings from the American Pediatrics Association and the American Heart Association that showed flavored milk is not excessively harmful to children.

One of the newest board members, Scott Schmerelson, said, “As a school principal who monitored the cafeteria a lot, I saw children line up to get their chocolate or strawberry milk first in case it ran out, and inevitably, it ran out. Can we please get it back?”

Zimmer asked the district staff to look into getting the federal government to pay for water or see how the district can get it at low cost.

Benavidez also pointed out that they are piloting hydration stations at Marina Del Rey Middle School and Jefferson High School to have flavored water with strawberry and lemon added to it. “They are enormously popular,” she said.

She wrote down the board’s ideas and said, “Those are some of the things we can look at.”

Jesus Mendoza, regional administrator for the USDA, visits a San Fernando Valley school.

Students who depend on eating at school for their one — and sometimes only — meal of the day will be able to more easily find a location for free meals during the summer.

The expansion of the federal Summer Food Service Program will provide more meals to children and teens 18 years and younger during summer at school locations, Boys & Girls Clubs, community centers and social service agencies.

Students who typically get free and reduced lunches during the school year can now find other sites during the summer.

“We are reaching out more than ever before to places where we know we can reach these students and letting them know that some sites have breakfasts, lunch, snacks and dinners and they don’t have to apply or sign up, they just need to show up,” said Jesus Mendoza Jr., the USDA’s regional administrator for the Western Region of the United States. “Our summer meals program has really taken off, but we are concerned because many of the schools had to cut summer school programs and we want them to still have nutritious meals.”

• Read more: LAUSD is expanding summer school this year

Last summer, the federal program served 190 million students; this year they plan to reach 200 million nationwide. The federal government sponsors sites to run the program and get the word out to camps and faith-based and other nonprofit community organizations in low-income areas.

“Also during the summer months is a time when children gain weight if they are not physically active and are not eating nutritious meals,” Mendoza said. Some of the food programs are at libraries as well, where children spend the day and are involved with reading programs. Mendoza noted that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office announced a Get Summer initiative in April that the USDA is also working with to help keep students properly fed. The program gives youths ages 12-17 free access to all LA County YMCA’s in June and July.

For LA Unified students, that federal program means students can, for example, get breakfast and lunch at Granada Hills Charter in the San Fernando Valley from the day school ends until July 22, or if they live in San Pedro they can go to Bobbie Smith Elementary School in the Long Beach Unified School District for lunch between 10:45 and 11:45 a.m. The government aims to put the program in sties within 10 miles of any given address in the Los Angeles area.

LA Unified gets slightly less per meal for their summer food programs than they do during the school year, Mendoza said. The food program over the summer doesn’t contribute to the school’s budget debt, school officials said. The program also allows some of the district’s cafeteria workers to be employed throughout the year, Mendoza said.

Of the 750,000 meals dished up for breakfast, lunch and dinner to LA Unified students, more than 76,000 are served around dinnertime to about 140,000 students who stay after school, said Laura Benavidez, co-deputy director of Food Services.

“Sometimes, it will be the only meal the children will have until the next morning,” Benavidez said. “We want to make sure that students are properly nourished because it does help with their education.”

The meals, according to federal guidelines, consist of a protein, fruit, grain and dairy. Nationally, about 15.3 million children are living in households where they’re not sure where the next meal is coming from, and the USDA has served more than 1.2 billion summer meals since it started in 2009. About 22.1 million youth already receive free and reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch program, yet only about one in six of those (about 3.8 million) participate in the summer meals program.

More than 6,700 sponsors help dole out the summer meals — that’s 700 more than last year — and the number of sites increased by 20 percent to more than 66,000 locations.

The Summer Meals Site Finder (fns.usda.gov/summerfoodrocks) is a free, web-based application that features an easily searchable map to help locate sites serving summer meals. Last year, the site got about 5,000 visitors per day and as many as 69,000 page views per week.

Families can also identify nearby sites by calling 1-866-348-6479 (English) or 1-877-842-6273 (Spanish) or using a text service operated by a USDA partner by texting FOOD (English) or COMIDA (Spanish) to 877-877.

David Shapiro, from LACES, won Best Presentation with his team.

What’s for lunch? How about Sweet Potatoes Chicken Quesadilla, a healthy slaw with cumin-lime crema and a Grilled Pineapple Downtown with graham crackers, cinnamon and apple reduction? And it’s all less than 730 calories and costs $1.14!

Sounds like an impossible gourmet meal, but that’s the recipe that a team from Santee Education Complex cooked up Friday afternoon for a lunch that will make it onto LA Unified’s school menu next year. The team of Tochtli Espinoza, David Martinez and Jennifer Perez will get an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., in June to compete with other student chefs in the Cooking Up Change competition launched by the Healthy Schools Campaign.

“None of us have been to Washington, this is great,” Espinoza said after their win.

“We made something that we liked and is reflective of where we live,” added Martinez, referring to the easy-to-eat quesadillas. “It is easy to make too. Simple and fast.”

Perez, who came up with the catchy Pineapple Downtown dessert, said the team wanted to mix pineapple with peanut butter and make it crunchy. They used SunButter, made with roasted sunflower seeds, to avoid peanut allergies, a serious issue for school cafeterias.

“We think maybe it was the slaw that won it for us,” said Perez. They used low-fat mayonnaise, low-fat yogurt and cumin with lime.

The team wore note cards on their aprons from students in the school who had written reviews of their work, and the judges made note of their unique outfits.

The judges included professional chefs and some LA Unified employees: Chef Omar Briscoe, Lori Corbin, Gail Carney, Lisa Fontanesi and Philip D’Alessandro.

“Can you come to my house?” Carney asked one team of student cooks after sampling their lunch.

Laura Benavidez, LA Unified’s interim co-director of Food Services, said the 20 students in the competition had to follow strict rules, like the district does when creating the 750,000 meals served daily. They had a list of approved ingredients to pick from, couldn’t go beyond their budget and had to stay within the sodium and fat limits that the district uses.

“If we used real beef, we would be above the fat content, so we’re using soy meat,” said 12-year-old David Shapiro while standing at the grill. “The kids don’t really know, but this is 100 percent vegetarian and it’s all under 400 calories.”

Shaprio and team members Amadi Cary, 13, and Aaron Withy, 12, were the youngest competitors Friday. They attend the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, which is one of two LA Unified middle schools with a culinary arts program. They are too young to compete for the trip to Washington, but they won the judges’ Best Presentation award because they explained their dishes well.

“We told our friends we were making sweet potato nachos and they didn’t really like the sound of it, but when they tried it, they liked it,” said Cary.

“It was a cool test on nachos,” Shaprio added. “We took a poll in the school.”

Withy said, “It’s unusual to have cooking in middle school, but the three of us have loved to cook since we were kids. We will all probably stick with it.”

Banning High School won the Best Side Dish award for their Peach Crisp, which included nutmeg and graham crackers. Nestor Flores and Jasmin De La Cuevas created that dessert, along with a savory penne with chicken, spinach and cheese.

The other entrees from Monroe, Narbonne, Polytechnic and West Adams high schools had dishes such as deconstructed chicken lettuce wrap, broccoli cheese sweet potato fries, rotini marinara, blazed vegetables, vanilla apple parfait and a Triple P fruit salad (peach, pear and pineapple with paprika and chili powder).

The competition was held at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College cafeteria near downtown. The school was on spring break.

“We are proud of all the students, and we may have to incorporate some of the other ideas we saw today too, they were all so great,” Benavidez said.

Afterward, after looking over the competition, Shapiro pointed out, “I don’t want to say anything bad, but cafeteria workers aren’t going to cut things in the shape of a heart, like one of these. And some of their portions look small. Our portions were huge and were only 400 calories.”

Their challenge is not unlike one the massive LA Unified Food Services division is facing: how to feed more than 640,000 kids daily for $50 million less a year.

According to November’s report of the Independent Financial Review Panel, Food Services has been a drain of about a $50 million a year on the district’s general fund, or $168.6 million over the past four years. In short, the division needs to pay for itself, the report said.

The report states: “The encroachment of the food services operations is not warranted and actions should be implemented immediately to curtail and eliminate any contribution from the General Fund to the Cafeteria Fund, thus saving roughly $50 million per year. Large urban districts with a high percentage of children eligible for the National School Lunch Program typically are able to sustain and grow their food service programs in a self-sufficient manner without contributions from other operating funds such as the General Fund.”

Laura Benavidez, the district’s interim co-director of food services, said the division is “constantly working to drive down costs” even as their meals programs have included free breakfasts for all students and suppers at some schools. “Our biggest costs are food and labor.” The district serves 127.8 million meals at 1,100 locations each year.

LA Unified’s average cost of all meals–breakfasts, lunches and dinners–is $1.70 per meal with the five requirements per serving. The restrictions and nutritional requirements are more rigorous at LA Unified than at the national or statewide levels.

“We’re able to provide more nutritional meals than the standards set at the national and state levels, and we’re always working on improving them,” Benavidez said.

Although there are no solid statistics comparing the cost per lunch at independent charter schools, Benavidez said the general costs for charter school lunches are $3.50 per meal. Nationally, the School Nutrition Association estimates private school lunches are made at $3.72 a serving, while the average traditional public school lunch is made at $1.20 a plate with the same nutritional requirements.

Some local independent charter schools have lunches for their students at $6 or $7 a meal, Benavidez said. Parents pay the extra costs for the homemade catered meals.

Currently, more than 2,800 students at 11 of the 211 independent charter schools in LA Unified are contracting out meals from the district’s Food Services department, Benavidez said. The charter schools are charged the same price as the rest of the district.

Other than setting the price for those charters that contract with the district, LA Unified has no other oversight or controls over meals served at independent charter schools. Although the district is responsible for monitoring charters and approving them in the district, that doesn’t include the food. Benavidez said, however, that if the staff sees something when visiting a charter site, the school will be notified of issues.

“There is not an oversight on our part, but we always try to encourage all the schools to utilize our services and information when they choose food,” Benavidez said. “If they participate in the National School Lunch Program, they have requirements they must follow.”

But LA Unified’s own rules are more rigorous. For example, some independent charter schools may allow chocolate milk to be served, which state rules allow, but LA Unified does not. Last month, the school board voted to make it the first large school district serving antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken and turkey.

Laura Benavidez of LAUSD Food Services

LA Unified is part of the Urban School Food Alliance, which is made up of the largest school districts in the nation, including New York, Chicago, Miami, Orlando and Dallas. Together they are asking for triple the amount of money now provided per school lunch by the USDA, Benavidez said.

On a recent visit to LA Unified, Keith Concannon, the USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, told LA School Report, “We know there is more money needed for the per meal price, but there won’t be the money for it this year. They will want to take money from somewhere else if we do something like that. We are putting more than $1 billion to help low income schools, however. That may help.”

LA Unified has 18 high schools and two middle schools with culinary academies that offer cooking tracts. Teams from seven of them will cook in Friday’s competition at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

Culinary students from Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies will also participate in Friday’s competition but won’t be eligible to win the D.C. trip because they are middle schoolers.

The winning team will get an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the “Cooking up Change” National Competition against other students from Chicago, Houston, Dallas, St. Paul and other parts of the country. The only other California school district participating in the national competition is Orange County.

This is the third time LA Unified has participated in the 9-year-old competition. The last year LA Unified participated, in 2014, the team from Manual Arts Senior High School won second place.

Fame comes along with the free trip too.

“The winners will have their recipes included on the school menus next year,” Benavidez said. “And they’ll have bragging rights.”

Steve Zimmer at Mosk Elementary School.

LA Unified is making no bones about wanting to change the chicken industry, and federal officials visiting the district Thursday say they’re on their way to doing it.

LA Unified became the first large school district in the nation to contract for antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken and turkey in a vote Tuesday. On Thursday, visiting dignitaries from the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that such a bold move could have a direct effect on the way poultry is handled in the country.

“The district uses their leverage because of their great volume, and other districts take a look at what they’re doing, and that is how things get changed,” said Kevin Concannon, Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. “It takes leadership to make this happen.”

The leadership came from school board president Steve Zimmer, who is seeing the culmination of more than two years of work since getting the Good Food Procurement resolution passed that supports local farmers and local economies and seeks alternatives to foods that are genetically modified or hormone-filled.

“We are trying to change the industry,” Zimmer told LA School Report after a meeting at Stanley Mosk Elementary School with the undersecretary about expanding free lunches in the district. “We have the courage to make this investment, and then the rest of the nation will follow and eventually the industry-wide expectation is that it will be hormone free and antibiotic free.”

The cost will be higher, in fact about 67 percent higher, than the chicken the district has purchased in the past from Tyson Foods, said Laura Benavidez, interim Food Service Division deputy co-director. The new contract is with Gold Star Foods from Perdue Farms in Ontario, Calif.

“The cost will become less and less of an issue as more districts join us,” Zimmer said.

Tyson Foods spokesman Gary Mickelson said in a statement that the company was the first to qualify for the Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use certification from the USDA, and added, “In addition, we announced that we’re striving to eliminate the use of human antibiotics from our U.S. broiler chicken flocks by the end of September 2017, and we plan to annually report on our progress.”

LA Unified serves 700,000 meals a day, which include favorites like chicken teriyaki and chicken drumsticks. Over the past decade, the school board required more nutritious meals with less fat, salt and sugar, plus additional servings of fresh fruits, vegetables and more meat-free options, such as Meatless Mondays, which is part of the school menu. Chocolate and other flavored milks have been replaced by low-fat or nonfat milk, and sodas and junk food are no longer for sale at schools.

“The passing of the resolution shows the bold steps this school district is taking to ensure the health and wellness of students,” Benavidez said. “Providing the best possible, highest-quality food for students shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right.”

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, student board member Leon Popa said that he learned in school about Tyson products and was concerned about the antibiotics. “What I learned in school was really horrendous, and the problem continues to grow,” Popa said.

Zimmer noted that he has heard similar feedback from high school students who want to know where their food is coming from. “We have to be far, far, far more nutritiously aware at school, so when they go home they can say something if all they have is access to hormone- and antibiotic-pumped meats.”

Zimmer said, “Chicken is the first frontier, and we are looking to change this. We are looking to leverage our power as the largest public sector procurer to make sure that we’re changing not only the school food industry, but the poultry industry as a whole.”

What’s next? Zimmer said, “I worry about beef, but not nearly as much as poultry.”

And Zimmer said he is not concerned about putting some companies out of business. He said, “If Netflix didn’t knock down Blockbuster, there would be no ‘House of Cards.’”

The board has approved spending up to $856,635 to survey 477 public school cafeterias to see what needs to be upgraded, fixed or replaced.

“Many of our kitchens are aged and have walk-in refrigerators and freezers that have been in use for over 30 years,” Timikel Sharpe, co-director of the LA Unified’s Food Services Division, said in a report to the school board. “Currently, there are more than 770 open repair tickets for refrigeration work alone across the district.”

Sharpe said, “Like many pieces of our kitchen equipment, they have far exceeded their life expectancy and pose a potential threat to our ability to prepare and provide safe and healthy meals for our students. For many schools, new equipment has become a necessity.”

The district has to identify what needs fixing or replacement. A survey began last summer with 206 schools to help the district begin prioritizing what needs to be done. There are 477 more schools to check, and more than 18,000 pieces of kitchen equipment to test.

The plan is to develop a list of needs for refrigeration systems, aging facilities, outdated plumbing, exhaust hoods and fire suppression systems to meet current fire, mechanical and health codes. So far, none of the money has been used for kitchen equipment.

Board member Mónica Ratliff, chair of the district budget committee, suggested there might be more to the problem than age.

“Equipment becomes obsolete as soon as we give it to them,” she said. “There’s something wrong there.”

Laura Benevidez

In a new position statement, a coalition of food professionals from the nation’s six largest school districts, including LA Unified, is asking for triple the amount of money now provided per school lunch by the USDA and allowing for more free meals as well as autonomy on how to serve them.

The Urban School Food Alliance, which also includes New York, Chicago, Miami, Orlando and Dallas, recently the team met with politicians from the Senate Agricultural Committee and the First Lady’s office to present their case.

“We are working with a combined total of more than three million meals, so what we have to say should have an impact with Congress,” said LAUSD’s representative Laura Benavidez.

The requests strongly suggested and advocated by the six largest school districts are:

• Significantly invest in farm economies and children by increasing the USDA food dollars spent by school districts.
• Expand non-congregate feeding opportunities to increase access to food.
• Provide meals to children as part of their instructional day by implementing Free Meals for All service.

Each year the United States Department of Agriculture allocates money based on numbers of lunches served the prior year. Currently, the USDA gives almost 25 cents for every lunch served during the previous school year.

The Alliance is asking for an increase to 75 cents per lunch. They say the money will align the food costs more closely with many private schools that spend an average of $3.72 for food at lunch, as opposed to the public school average of $1.20.

“We know it’s a long shot, and it’s hard to get something like this in this political climate,” said Benavidez, who helped draft the report. “But we feel that this is important.”

The second request asks that schools have more autonomy about how they present lunches, so that more students will eat them. Right now, students must eat their meals in supervised settings.

Benavidez explained that some meals could be packaged as brown bag lunches that could be taken off campus or brought home, and it would reduce potential throw-away waste.

The third request simply asks that the meals be offered for free.

“We are changing the image of the school lunches with the cafeteria lady,” said Ellen Morgan, an LAUSD spokeswoman. “Our meals are healthy and delicious.”

The report says, “While in school, children are constantly learning, and we believe that we can offer them important lessons through the food they eat.”

The alliance pointed out, “In our public schools, we do not give free textbooks to children below the poverty line while requiring their wealthier classmates to purchase the books. Similarly, if you are one of our children, you should be able to receive free meals so that the experience with food becomes the lesson and the menu becomes the curriculum.”

Benavidez is the co-director of Food Services for LAUSD, which provides more than 127.8 million breakfast, lunch, snacks and supper meals to more than 600,000 students each year.