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.’”

Mikelah Wynn at breakfast with Kevin Concannon.

Mikelah Wynn, 11, looked skeptically at the tall man in the suit who sat down with her and her friends as she opened up her breakfast Thursday morning. The man was Kevin Concannon, USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, who came from Washington, D.C., to her fifth-grade class in Winnetka to celebrate the 50th anniversary of School Breakfast Week and introduce a new program that is getting her free lunch at school.

“I’m interested in what you like and don’t like in your school breakfasts, how is it for you?” asked Concannon.

Holding up her apple, Mikelah declared, “I like the fruit. I like the milk too.”

Steve Zimmer asks students what they like in their school lunches.

Across the table, her friend Savanna Sadaba, 11, admitted after some prompting, “The breakfast burritos taste a little rubbery.”

Next to her, the school’s student council president, Cindy Estrada, said, “We all like the coffee cake, but it’s not as sweet as it used to be.”

For that she can thank Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian, who was standing behind them and said she helped the district tweak the recipes to comply more with the federal standards for whole grains and sugars. “We have to watch the levels of sugar and nutritional value, but they are still very good,” Ekchian said. “It is so important that every child has breakfast. And every child’s metabolism is different, and if you are hungry it affects your learning.”

Students take the breakfasts to class.

The national announcement of the federal school food program took place at Stanley Mosk Elementary School in the west San Fernando Valley, where more than 60 percent of students fall into a low-income bracket. Federal, state and local school officials kicked off the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools to identify students that could qualify for free meals by referencing other state and federal programs, including CalWORKS, CalFresh, Medicare and other social service programs that already earmark such populations. When more than 40 percent of a school’s population falls into that category, the entire school gets free lunches.

For LA Unified, that means 339 schools and 257,500 students — nearly half the district’s students — will get breakfast and lunch each day at no charge without their parents or guardians having to complete a separate application for free or reduced-price meals. The new program began this month and will continue through the 2018-19 school year. And it will save the school district more than $60 million over the next three years.

“We came here to announce this because LAUSD is the largest district with students affected by this, and they have been innovative and plan to identify more students in their school population with CEP,” Concannon said. “There is a heavy commitment in Congress on both sides to see how this works.”

LA Unified has more students identified than in New York or Chicago.

“This is also for charter, parochial and private schools, they are all eligible,” Concannon said.

Food Services manager Noemi Verduzco shows her kitchen to Concannon.

He and his U.S. Department of Agriculture entourage were also celebrating 50 years of serving breakfasts in the classroom. Today, nearly 100,000 schools and 15 million students nationwide participate in free breakfasts. Free breakfasts started in earnest at LA Unified in 2012 and are now served to all students. The meals are brought in to each classroom by appointed students pushing wheeled carts, and the leftovers are returned to the cafeteria.

“I have heard from teachers, school nurses and administrators that this has helped with complaints of headaches, stomach aches, restlessness, paying attention, and there’s good socialization and healthy eating,” Concannon said. “It even helps with school attendance.”

School attendance directly impacts the district’s budget, and LA Unified gets about 20 cents for every breakfast served. The free meal programs won’t disrupt the Title 1 status of any school, Concannon said.

“We are hoping that there will be less of a stigma for kids who may be conscious about how they are perceived by others, and whether they are in the free lunch program or not,” Concannon said. “This way, everyone is.”

Jesus Mendoza, USDA Western regional director, at Mosk Elementary.

The school’s food services manager, Noemi Verduzco, showed the Washington delegation how the students packed the gluten-free choices and milk and juices into their packs to wheel off to the classrooms. “We have made it so that there is a lot less waste and things thrown out than when we first started,” Verduzco said. “We are offering more choices and finding out what they like.”

But it’s still a challenge, according to USDA Western Regional Office administrator Jesus Mendoza, who represents Western states including Alaska.

“California, and LAUSD in particular, has taken the lead, but there is still some hesitancy,” Mendoza said. “Teachers are resistant because they think it will take time from their curriculum, and custodial staff is resistant because they think it will add to their clean-up work or bug and rodent problems. But when they hear how it’s working here, then they may be more open to it. Some teachers integrate class lessons into it, I’ve seen math and English teachers using the meals in their lessons.”

School board president Steve Zimmer said it was “a sad fact that LA Unified is sometimes every link in the food chain for our kids,” and that the only good food they get is at the schools. Students at Mosk are also provided suppers, which are served at a limited number of LA Unified schools.

During a news conference, Zimmer asked half a dozen kids what they liked best and got answers such as bean dip, tater tots, hamburgers, spaghetti and pupusas — a tortilla usually filled with meat or cheese.

“I think we all remember tater tots, but I never got spaghetti or pupusas when I went to school,” Zimmer quipped. “It looks like things have really improved!”

Breakfast in class (via TakePart)

Overcoming lingering technical and logistical problems, eight remaining LAUSD schools will begin providing free breakfast in the classroom within the first two weeks of the coming school year, district officials said.

That will complete the largest school breakfast program in the nation after more than three years of planning, said Laura Benavidez, project manager for the LAUSD Breakfast in the Classroom program.

Breakfasts served in the first 10 minutes of class were to be completely rolled out by the end of last school year, but problems at the eight schools prevented them from happening, Benavidez said.

“We won’t be hitting all the eight schools with breakfasts on the first day because there’s always so much going on, but it will happen at all the sites during the month of August,” said Benavidez. School starts August 18.

The schools yet to roll out are: Encino Elementary, Van Gogh Elementary, Revere Middle School, Beckford Elementary, Brentwood Science Magnet, Hale Middle School, Vernon City Elementary and Esteban Torres High School.

Now, more than 350,000 breakfasts are being served, compared with the 100,000 breakfasts served district wide before the in-class program began.

At first, there was no opt-out method for the schools that did not want the Breakfast in the Classrooms program. Now, there are 32 LAUSD schools with less than 20 percent of children who fall below the poverty level, and those schools have elected to opt out of the program. Still, they all have a nutrition time later in the morning.

Also, the schools are making money from the federal government. Every school that gets 70 percent of the students to eat breakfast will earn 20 cents per day per student. Of the 630 schools that launched BiC over the past three years, 588 of them, or 93 percent, have reached the 70 percent threshold.

Despite some teacher complaints, and concerns for food waste, the district officials said they are trying to make the process more efficient and plan for some changes early in the school year.

Allowing students to pick what they want to eat, and in some cases saving the food for later, will prevent a lot of food from being thrown away. But, that will be yet another roll out.

“We are not going to overwhelm the teachers with new procedures right away,” Benavidez said.

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.