Take Your Family To School Week

Take Your Family To School Week

Wed 08 Feb 2012

Story by The Food Revolution Team
 

Next week, February 12-18 2012, is ‘PTA Take Your Family To School Week’. Each February this event is celebrated to pay tribute to PTA’s legacy of building family-school partnerships, and provides schools with an avenue to invite families in, with the purpose of expanding and enhancing family engagement in schools across the country.

Visiting your children’s school is a great way to become part of the school community. Once on site, you can find out more about their education and school routine. It’s also a great chance to see exactly what food is available to them during their hours at school each day and what nutrition, health and culinary education your kids are getting. You might also connect with some other Food Revolutionaries!

Do Your Schools’ Meals Meet the USDA Guidelines?



At the end of January, the long awaited final USDA school meal standards were released which will come into the play in the cafeteria this fall. So as we enter the school year 2012-2013 all schools across the country will have to assess and, where needed, change their menus to meet these new standards, including:

• Doubling the amount of fruit and vegetable servings and increasing the variety of vegetables
• Setting new standards to ensure an increase in servings of whole grains and reduce sodium and fat
• Requiring that only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties are available
• Set calorie standards based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion sizes

Now is a perfect time to visit your children’s school and see whether their meal programs already meet these new USDA standards, and if not what they need to change and how these changes will impact the health of your kids.

So next week, why not join in the PTA ‘Take Your Family To School Week’, check out what is in the cafeteria, do our “school food audit” and connect with other parents and revolutionaries, along with lunch staff and school officials to help your school reach these standards and beyond.

Help Build A Powerful Showcase Of School Lunches



While in school, don’t forget to snap a picture of the meals served in your schools and add them to our school lunch photo wall to help us build a powerful showcase of school lunches, which we can use to compare for years to come and when these new rules are fully implemented.

Let us know how you get on visiting your school by posting on our Food Revolution Community page.


The Food Revolution Team