good morning everyone a quorum is present a hearing in the house committee on education and labor subcommittee on healthy families and communities on examining innovative practices in child nutrition will come to a water before  would like to remind everyone to turn off their cell phones and put their blackberries on silence so we don't have beeps and different tones coming through i know recognize myself followed by ranking member flats from pennsylvania for an opening statement number one i'd like to welcome everybody for being here and being the witnesses today we'll examine in a practices which will help increase  access to child nutrition programs and to more healthy food for our children our schools increased access for us schoolchildren is a critical issue as we move forward and work on the child nutrition reauthorization given the current harsh financial realities for many families in our in my district and throughout the nation schools have an increasingly important role to play in providing children with nutritious food during their days as a nurse for over thirty years i seen firsthand the risks of illnesses that can result from eating habits there's also a surplus of data that indicates that we'll never perform better throughout the day and less likely to become obese we have all heard our parents say breakfast is the most important meal of the day studies have proven that parents do know best research has shown that children regularly eat breakfast had better standardized test scores better behavior and were less hyperactive than children that skipped breakfast eating breakfast gives you energy increasing your physical activity during the day eating breakfast hunger which avoids making it easy to avoid overheating it could help reduce obesity in our students know our school children are not eating enough fruits and vegetables disease control and prevention released a report that found that less than ten percent of us high school students are eating the combined recommended daily amounts  fruits and vegetables we all know the importance of eating healthy foods including our fruits and vegetables overall health of our children in the fight against obesity the child nutrition meal programs can make a great impact because that may provide more than fifty of the students food and nutrition on a regular school day we know that change for adults is hard but if we start to educate our children early enough lifelong habits in the values of healthy living and wellness for the future by providing access fruits and vegetables we have a wonderful opportunity to establish positive lifelong habits and of course we cannot reach eligible  the decision we make during reauthorization a very important number of children and that was why we have assembled such a knowledgeable and i thank you for being here we will hear testimony today about some terrific innovation practices which increase access to the programs and better food but by taking a comprehensive approach to nutrition our children families and communities will all be healthy and i want to thank you for being here and i look forward to your testimony innovative practices aimed at improving childhood nutrition access to nutritional foods and a healthful diet is an important component in ensuring children receive the nutritional needs necessary to be successful at school and start the journey towards a more healthy adulthood the centers for disease control prevention state that seventeen percent of children ages two to nineteen considered overweight these overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults and have a much greater risk of developing cardiovascular diseases diabetes and certain cancers several initiatives at both the local and federal level have taken significant steps in advancing the health of school children improvements made to both the national school lunch and school breakfast programs for the last several years has sought to improve the nutritional wellbeing of our nation's students while the school lunch program must meet the clickable recommendations of the one thousand nine hundred five dietary guidelines many schools are choosing to go beyond these recommendations according to the c d c the percentage of schools that operate alec are items such as vegetables and salads to students has increased twenty percent since two thousand with over seventy two percent of schools offering these items over sixty six percent of schools have chosen to trim fat from meat or use lean meat up from fifty six percent in two thousand as a parent of a fifth grader and seventh grader and i regularly go in and have lunch at both of my children's schools i can see the improvements  the effort being made in my home school district york suburban and actually kind of interesting to be sitting in the lunchroom of the middle school with my seventh grader what was a junior high when i went there and i always comment that it seemed much larger when i was there when i go back as an adult today but i have seen great effort in the both lunchrooms of the almighty school and middle school in that effort to really provide nutritional meals for our communities children the child nutrition and women infants and child children reauthorization act of two thousand and four required schools participating in school lunch programs to develop comprehensive wellness policies local efforts have also improved with over sixty five percent of school districts providing living in adams county misuari will share with us experiences in her school where she worked collaboratively with her colleagues administrators and the local community to increase nutrition awareness and physical activity certainly look forward to hearing her testimony along with the testimony of our witnesses as we address this very important issue as we look out for the best interests of our nation students and in doing so look out for the future of our nation as a become our nation's leaders i thank each of you like to take this opportunity to introduce a tireless advocate for nutrition and wellness and ally county i had the pleasure of working with him when i was in the california legislature and i sponsored a bill to increase food stamp eligibility by eliminating the fingerprinting requirement it's wonderful to see you in d c welcome mat works in the california food policy advocates los angeles office he works to improve the health and well being of low income californians by increasing their access to nutritious and affordable food he travels throughout l a county to help increase access to school and community meal programs and shape policy and regulations by educating elected officials in sacramento and washington d c on low income angelenos nutritional needs he's been doing this work for over ten years i know i speak for the subcommittee when i say we look forward to your testimony i thank you for that next i would like to introduce someone from my district mary lago assistant superintendent of business and management systems of the westbury union of school district in westbury new york mary is a school business official whose interest in the board broad picture of the educational rina distinguishes her as a senior administrator of executive mary has a broad responsibilities for the financial and ministry of operational budget of ten million i was lucky enough to visit one of the westbury schools school pal elementary this past monday and observe the wonderful school breakfast program i have to say on monday when i when i got there a little bit earlier so i could have a chance to talk to the principal and mary and as the school buses came in the kids formed a lawn and they headed straight to the cafeteria and one thing as a nurse i have to say each child was given like the pearls to wash their hands before remember the flu season wash your hands it's important but i have to tell you how impressed i was you know i stayed on the line and i talked to the kids i wanted to know how they liked the food because that's important thing if the food is not the kids are not going to eat it and as i watch them go down the line and pick out their vegetables their fruits  the choice between scrambled eggs and french toast and then i follow them into the cafeteria and i have to tell you as i talk to the kids about the food program they loved it and i know mary will probably have other stories especially for these kids that unfortunately sometimes i'm sure it's probably one of the best meals they get for the day but it was amazing to watch and you know grade school you know when i went to grade school and i think that having a good graphic and seeing the orderly that goes along it takes that hunger and i'm sure that they're all doing much better in school today than they were a few years ago will hopefully join us shortly but ask me in the meantime to introduce one of his richard de burgh richard has served our nation in uniform as an army captain including service in vietnam as a forward observer and after returning home and leaving military service has been engaged in worked in the food service for several decades now including more than twenty years in food service his school food service experience has included opening and managing the largest school district production facility in the nation serving as president of the southern california school food service association and serving as a field supervisor and director whose services for both the glendale and los angeles california united unified school district in two thousand and five he was awarded the friend of child nutrition award by the school whose service association mr diverge is currently an adjunct professor at the university of southern california for the certificate program for chief business officials teaching both services purchasing for over one million eight hundred thousand think that's correct right one million two million school lunches each day and over one thousand school districts throughout the nation so  certainly one appreciate your service to our nation in uniform and walk on the expertise that you bring to this hearing today so thank you mr berger i want to say something at this point mr platts i brought up there are many members on this can some committee unfortunately a lot of us are on two or three committees by not seeing a full day please don't feel that this is not an important subject everyone on this committee knows it's an slippery rock university and health and physical education with an emphasis on lifetime fitness share and her masters degree and health education from penn state university missy arguer reed was named a volunteer of the year from the american heart association for her work with their participation in the jump rope for heart event and received winnie unger outstanding teacher of the year award she was also featured in the october two thousand and eight issue of good housekeeping for her work and the work of  school district on initiatives for healthy changes in the foods offered to students filing this yard read attended the wellness institute at dixon university it was through this graduate class that she began her work on the school health council within the upper adam national nutrition for city public schools welcome name right we're going to call you  if you could follow up and try to close that would be appreciated remember all your testimony has been given to us and believe me we've all read chairwoman members of the panel my name is matthew sharpe i work with california food policy advocates in los angeles as you heard in a kind introduction from congresswoman chu like you we are very concerned about the impact of the recession on hunger food insecurity and obesity the purpose of my testimony today is to share progress from california and identify next steps for congress to strengthen and expand the child nutrition programs among all the possible topics i'd like to remarks on a terrific in underused tool called direct certification as you heard in the chairwoman opening statement director to pick a sion is required in the programs it is in a data driven method of automatically enrolling low income students that receive snap formerly known as food stamps or canada or the food distribution program an indian reservations international school lunch program for free meals is a highly accurate method of establishing eligibility and it's extremely inexpensive because the information was already collected by another government agency expanded by congress and this committee in two thousand and four it is an important part of how the child nutrition programs work want to share with you a little progress in california since two thousand and four we passed a state law that stablish a statewide database to match all the students at a statewide level who are receiving snap into this school meals program that's resulted in a thirty seven percent increase in the number of students matched him to free school meals so that's a normal amount of time and expense that local school principals secretaries and food service officials do not have to spend time on it to an amazing area of progress is doing great things for a lot of kids but some students are still missing out on the benefits of free and nourishing meals so some innovations are needed to enroll more students and provide them with a good nutrition that congress intended to simple ways to think about the solutions one is to focus on individual children in california one point three million low income students who receive medicaid or eschew public health insurance and that verifies their household income are not benefiting from automatic enrollment in to school meals and there may be at least three million more nationwide simply put congress should permit use of medicaid and s chip data to enroll already eligible children into free meals second way to think about individual children would be to ensure that more students are captured within the existing system more than two in five eligible children in sixteen states are not automatically enrolled congress should also provide the tools and incentives so that states reach all the eligible snappin tannic participants with this data driven accurate method of enrolling students the second way to think about the solutions is a focus on schools a thousand schools in low income areas of california that serve over a half million children an enormous number of kids an enormous number of schools have very high rates of free  reduced price in rollman in the meals program enormous number of kids are directly certified in the schools yet they still must collect paper applications for a remainder of those student bodies and so we think that congress ought to take steps  to provide schools the opportunity of using direct certification rate as a basis for automatic enrollment into meals school food service water washing salads instead of pushing paper families or spending too much time on antiquated and cumbersome and redundant paperwork it's a simple fix for an enormous number of households and to underline what you've heard from the other panelists and what you have heard in the opening statement there's an enormous amount of work to be done to ensure that these programs actually result in students receiving the meal benefits not just being enrolled and you're going to hear from some other panelists later today about creative strategies th congress can provide incentives and tools to expand including the breakfast in the classroom program is number of opportunities to strengthen these programs in a way that ensures that we get through the sequence of both establishing enrollment providing kids the benefits and ensuring the consumer nutritious meal at the school site provided a lot more detail in the written testimony very copious amount of information about the solutions about the problems and about all the steps that congress can take to underline these important tools and make sure they're fully utilized in your communities and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have thank you and let me tell you my staff loves data so don't worry about that we love it food service manager mike and it is an honor to present to you today the westbury school district innovative strategies in providing a healthy breakfast and to help students raise alertness and performance the westbury school district in westbury new york began the universal breakfast program as a pilot program in march two thousand and nine with the goal of providing students with the proper nourishment to start their school day the connection between nutrition and optimal learning has been calm increasingly clear and the westbury school district commitment to this program is part of our overall mission to educate the whole child and help every child succeed we currently serve a population of forty two hundred children with four elementary schools one middle school and one high school our demographics are such sixty one percent hispanic thirty five percent black two percent white one point one asian point three multi racial and two point american indian approximately one third of our student body are english language learners are free and reduced lunch rate is eighty four percent as you know that's what denotes the percentage of families living at or below the poverty level with the current pilot program at the at the pre k and the conductor and levels students are served hot and cold breakfast in their classrooms while at the elementary and secondary level students who wish to participate eat eat a hot and cold breakfast in the cafeteria as congresswoman mccarthy is that students are led directly by the school staff from their bosses into the into the cafeteria to eat this breakfast we will fully implement the breakfast on the go program this coming november and with thrilled about it with the goal of making graphics at festival to every student under this program pre kindergarten kinda gone students will continue to eat breakfast in their classrooms while elementary level students will receive a bag or box breakfast upon exiting their school bus to eat in the classrooms and other students at the secondary level will arrive by bus fifteen minutes earlier tell out more time to eat their breakfast as a background in two thousand and four on obesity study was performed in our schools in our high school by the school nurse which indicated that image already of a high school students were overweight to address the healthy eating solutions the superintendent the high school nurse and i decided on a specific course of action and we formed the nutrition committee with the overall idea to effect a paradigm shift in the food served and selected in the school cafeterias through awareness and the district wide commitment to helping students and the community the idea of sustaining a balance in metabolism to permit to stay in concentration and then durrance for more effective and efficient student achievement is the heart of the purpose we formed an action plan and what better to start with the need of the day that was the aim of this nutrition committee we had a plan of action where we collected data we visited the schools we observed the food choices available in the cafeteria we had vendors present nutritious choices for us to consider we shared recommendations with the staff for changing the school menu not only to replace replaced drinks and snacks with a more nutritious one but this is the following what we did we replaced white flour bagels with whole w bagels multi grain muffins and non sugar cereals we reduce a portion of high content carbohydrate and added fresh fruits and selections we also directive wellness policy which included nutritional guidelines and had food choices and for our board of education to approve we also recognize that we needed to have different eating habits and include exercise in addition to this we also started family nutrition information night these are held these are held at night at our lemon elementary school and the workshops are conducted by medical professionals and one of these  partnerships institutions is for health care disparities at the nassau university medical center a demonstration using cultural foods to prepare healthy meals and samples of healthy snacks as well as cookbooks in english were distributed so we are really thinking out of the box in summary the interesting thing is that nurses now are nurse school nurses have reported that had there has been a substantial increase in awareness that nutrition has on students health and performance district data shows an mourning in morning classes in large measure due to the impact that these healthy choices have made in the overall wellbeing are high school principal has observed that students and more focused in addition building  administrators have noted less disruptive behavior in the classrooms and the hallways so we are very pleased with the breakfast on the go program we are going to institute in november we were very successful the results were that we have increased our breakfast participation by twenty five percent using this new initiative and i just wanted to tell congress how important this program is to a school like ours which is a high needs district and we really use the funds what i'd like to recommend is that districts be given more commodity commodity foods that can be used in preparing the breakfast menu and also that they would be an increase in the per meal reimbursement the school district has a financial incentive to school districts to make the program more financially feasible thank you thank you mary mr de ranking member plats and members of the subcommittee on healthy families and communities everything a food service director buys except commodities they buy what they want from whom they want when they want it delivered where they want it why is it except commodities back to minnesota to be made into pizza and then sent back to them again twenty years ago i led a group of eleven other directors and we fought for three years and with the help of members of congress we were able to form a cooperative and direct delivery of our commodities both to ourselves and to the processors we choose we now have over a thousand school districts serving two million lunches a day the district range in size from over thirty seven thousand to a smallish twenty one many states even today the directors have no choice on whether commodities are processed in fact one state doesn't process commodities in many states commodities are delivered once a month to one location and each must fund and provide a warehouse a reserve figure eight or and then transport those foods from the one location schools in the district directors of course to develop menus based on commodities rather than on the menus of customers one which one of things that my colleague just referred to the co operative system changes all of that because of the changes in the farm bill several years ago and industry we are now providing choices that are both healthy and customer friendly by april of each year our member districts know where ninety five percent of their commodities are going and where when they're going to be delivered they choose what they want and they're getting it for example u s d a provides check in at least eight different ways our members can receive deliveries directly to each school or have a process by processors into over one hundred fifty different items in other words we offer more choices than starbucks does coffee our purchasing contracts ask each vendor to agree to sell to our district the lowest price in the state all except one of agreed to do that and that one went bankrupt this year we returned over one million dollars in volume discounts to our local school districts in fact many of our members receive more money from us in volume discounts and they pay us to coordinate their commodities this past year for the first time we tied our contracts as a commodity market and  specified for this committee and has an innovative food service program and i worked for over two years to replicate a commercial delivery system for fresh produce using entitlement dollars the program was an overwhelming success in the  a pilot and hopefully will be able to expand it to include carrots and oranges and grapes kids will eat sliced apples well throw away a whole lot stephen ambrose in his book on the construction the fence american red road with an interesting observation in the eighteenth century railroad barons with the wealthiest people in america today they don't exist the rural banks should consider themselves to be transportation innovators not real barriers we need to do the same rethinking in commodity foods and distribution business as usual to become an unusual practice i'm hopeful this committee will assist us in allowing more innovation how u s d a has been innovative in allowing better business practice redesign commodity distribution to look nothing like it started sixty years ago in closing i would like to see our customers changed when i was growing up there were no chicken nuggets there no happy meals family home today more than fifty percent of famil food budget is spent on food prepared outside the home when a parent today says it's time for dinner many children don't know whether to run to get your the car we need innovation in the national school lunch program so that when a child is asked where they want to go for ank you chairman mccarthy and members of the subcommittee for inviting me to testify today i want to offer a special thank you to ranking member todd platt my local congressman more time in front of the television and  coupled with increased calorie intake are packing the pounds on today in the upper adams we want to challenge head on and therefore we have come up with various strategies in programs to implement a new idea that physical activity and  into our students daily routine the upper out of school district is located in a rural south central pennsylvania which covers a geographical area of nine hundred square miles the approximate population of the residen is ten thousand the size of the school district itself is one thousand seven hundred twenty nine students which is compass is five schools the real mentary one middle school and a high school in two thousand and six i attended the wellness institute at dixon university requirements for this class included the creation and implementation of a wellness project within the upright and school districts this policy became our district local wellness plan as required by the two thousand and four nutrition act and we began implementation of this plan in the two thousand and six two thousand and seven school year activities which have developed out of the wellness plan include a monthly event which engages the students and staff in physical activity and nutrition a few of these events include a tailgate activity which promotes school spirit physical activity and nutrition for all students to participate followed by a healthy snack of fruits and vegetables the tailgate activity takes place in september after the children have participated in their football challenges they have a snack consisting of fruits and vegetables and the parents have provided the snack for the students and apple crunch schools across pennsylvania celebrate the great american apple crunch event was organized by pennsylvania advocates for nutrition and activity better known as pan at this event local fruit farmers in our area donate the apples go green a statewide celebration that takes place in march that helps schools and communities focus on the important role of vegetables as part of a healthy diet this event is held in part pennsylvania department of agriculture and supports national nutrition month market basket of the month brings together the school cafeteria classroom home and community through a strategic effort to promote healthy habits for students well span provides this opportunity for our school district we are currently one of six school districts across pennsylvania who have been selected to implement this market basket program taste testing is a favored event for the students its food sampling better known as the polite bite students are encouraged to try a new fruit or vegetable and then ask to go home and share the experience with their family examples of some of the fruits sampled have been star fruit mango pomegranate just to name a few i am pleased to share with you changes that have been implemented in our school cafeteria as a result of the collaborative nature of the local wellness plan rather than serve whole milk students made from one percent or fat free milk white bread is something of the past sandwiches are served either on bread or rolls which are multigrain or wheat a chain has been made from potato chips to the baked chips rather than serve students baked goods daily the cafeteria has done away with that and now serve fruit fresh fruit or canned our district has created a school health advisory council networking forum to oversee the wellness policy implementation our committee consists of school administrators physical education teacher health teacher family consumer science teachers school nurse food service personnel parent guidance counselor and representatives from well van which is our local health care organization initially the advisory council was created to advise and recommend nutrition standards to the school board and it minister raters through our wellness policy the first tas to draft a written wellness policy now that the draft has been accepted the advisory council make recommendations on activities to the school boards such as the panel activities that the individual schools participate in the advisory council also reviews potential school fundraisers to ensure they fall within the wellness plan the advisory council meets four to five times a year to date the recommendations of the visor council have been received with mixed reaction we have experienced different levels of support through the district for our efforts in closing study after study proves what educators have long believed to be true when a child basic nutrition and fitness needs are met they have the cognitive energy to learn in a cheap schools continue to be a core place for students to learn and practice healthy eating habits and can also be a primary place to gain the knowledge motivation and skills children need for lifelong physical activity schools are in a unique position to address children eating habits and be instrumental in efforts to reduce childhood obesity because the it significant amount of time that children spend in school and the number of children enrolled we are trying to make the students aware of this each day as we promote the healthy choices and physical activity and fun and creative ways i feel that on a local level we have made a real difference in the lives of our students by making them aware that small changes they do can be healthy my job is to offer education to enlighten students what small steps are possible like drinking one percent milk or going for a walk with their parents after dinner instead of sitting in front of the television these decisions can make a big difference in their overall health and therefore their life thank you for allowing me to testify today and i look forward to your question thank you tony director for the baltimore city public school system and i'm here because my clients are my clients behind me i work for eighty five thousand kids and these kids are sort of a living breathing testimony of how a schoolhouse rock program works these guys use the u s constitution to create a cafeteria bill of rights that simply demanded to have real food fresh food every day they went to the school board they brought the then current school lunches and said nobody would eat them and then they said what is your expectation then we as a planet decided that we were going to do something about it and we changed that and we just about eradicated that one in every three children born after the year two thousand will contract  american our children of color will contract this is preventable this is something that we can change and the good news is we can change that we will change us into baltimore we're doing some very tomatoes that they've just grown and they pluck a cherry tomato from a bind that's still warm from the summer sun and they plop that in their mouth and that wave or explodes that's a moment to moment that can only be experienced and it's also a moment that forever changes the way a kid looks at food it's no longer a consumptive thing they learn so much more they learn about stewardship they learn about the connection to the earth the planet to the place conversation about alternatives beginning a conversation about change and also having an opportunity to expose our kids to different cultures you know there are great  the single most important meal of the day and as a chef i go to my pantry and i open the doors of my pantry and i look inside and what i have a are birds right i have ravens and orioles right so there's no sort of  ravens tickets orioles tickets rollerskating path is whatever i could pull together to make this thing work but we went from serving five hundred breakfast a day to thirty five thousand breakfast today over to alice and she has a very compelling story and i'm glad that we're here but i think we all need to keep the focus on what this is about it's about you know this is a an amazing place of a first thank you hello my name is alice and i'm a spokesperson for my school's lunch committee thank you for inviting us here today and i'm delighted that i had the chance to speak up and help improve the food in our school system each day and the right to give back feedback and have input on the quality and selections made have our input be given serious consideration the plan of action was to put a cook kitchen and cooking staff in each baltimore city school prepared lunches and immediately begin serving students on how they feel about the cafeteria meals and for the school system information in future planning and purchasing second we decided we had to know more not just about our school but about all the schools so we had an experiment and invited the baltimore sun to observe him in an expedition to sample lunch in the end we had three once more school with only pre planted and packaged food from the one from the hamilton elementary school which had its own kitchen and one from the baltimore county school who came from outside the city district altogether the difference was clear our food was the worst and the surprise of the candidate was the best there school system as well to the baltimore city public schools people with more money are getting better taste your food and the unfairness of this made us mad some contacts that took pictures and wrote them up for the next  with our results in hand in the press on the case we went downtown to confront the former director of food nutrition at the school she was hopping mad about the article even though she told us that our hands were tied and the city was bound by  new director of nutrition dr joyce has been working hard to improve our lunches ever sent but we think there's still work to be done first we need healthy food that kids will actually eat and adults who need it why should kids everybody deserves to have fresh tasty and yummy food if possible why not make it local food apples from washington state when you can get them right here in maryland at a cheaper price we should think about our meals not as nutritional packages but as food that at home getting inferior meals at school all kids need to eat well if they live in baltimore city of baltimore county city baltimore may always be poorer than the county but the city can manage money better and healthier and tastier food rather fruit the sweets and the bread not a good lunch nor a good use of the school's money that people get free or reduced cost lunch and just throw it away it's like throwing money right down the drain much more often the experiment h eart of those mashed potatoes to the meat loaf just move out of the cell kids at all the point is we need to serve healthy food that kids will eat when i ask kids to help plan the menus when i design lunches with kids so that they eat their food every day thank you i want to thank everybody for the testimony obviously shows that everyone in front of us cares a great deal about our children in the future of this nation we need to bring the context of food  healthy food for our children because they are a future and if we don't take care of the children now where are we going to be twenty thirty years from now and that's what hopefully this committee will be able to make a big lot which hopefully will get into down the road on the hearing is how important physical education is with the food one can't go with the other or shouldn't be without the other our children are not getting the you have any input into the boxes so i like to ask all of you on the grab and go lunches that are going to be out there and what makes the decisions on what goes into those boxes and allison i guess you would be the person that would say how will do our own so moving forward we are going to box our all of our baggage and we will cook the food in our cafeteria and we will design it based on what we have that we want to do and healthy food choices and we'll go back to the committee and to the students and get their feedback like any other vendor would have to get your customer feedback and and that will determine schools they don't have students that are actually able to pay so the schools that have more maybe a middle or upper income families you know half the students are helping to support to have the lunches to the students that is unfair you know as far as i'm concerned if we're going to make children healthier we should actually really look a little bit deeper on how we make sure all of our children get the right the nutrition that mr platts chair again my thanks to each of you for your testimony and a great cross section of witnesses mr green i want to start with you in your testimony you talked about the various different programs and one that caught my attention was the family fitness program as one who very much believes in for long term success and perma success it really needs to be a family buy in and not just what the charity to school but then how that translates to at home i see for i'm drinking my water today because five years ago there would have been a mountain dew sitting here and sitting at the dinner table my  five year old drink but a case of soda week and commute for my district and use that as my school used to have the caffeine sitting at the dinner table one night my five year old saw my glass of soda and they get sweets but to this day they don't get soda now ten and thirteen and my five year old said with that if it's so bad for me why do you drink so much of it or say i don't drink soda anymore and so that buy in is so important it sounds like that's part of your program is that family engagement and that being one example so could you expand on how that works and the success you know how it's gone the activity we do in school are just for the students and hopefully i would like them to carry it over to their home life but i don't know that to be truly happening but if i actually invite the families to come in and do activities along with their children of physical activity then i know by the number of people that are coming and actually coming back and getting higher attendance at my monthly events that i know that more people are buying into it and then actually hopefully making the healthier choices at home so it's an event that takes place once a month and i encourage any of the students that are in the school to come along with their parents and it's an hour program and within the hour we do some type of physical activity i have it being for each different evening program for example when the weather is warm or we're outside we did just golf and we've also done basketball activities i set up different stations around in the gymnasium and they rotate amongst the various stations we've done volleyball activities a volleyball game we  do just simple movement in tag games the school that i teach at is that kindergarten through third grade building so any of the students are encouraged to come and a lot of times they have older siblings that might be in another elementary in our district which is a four through six building so it's nice to see the older siblings actually coming along with the younger siblings and the parents to the evening activities the number of people that normally come out on a monthly basis are somewhere between thirty to sixty so i feel that and it seems like it's growing so the i guess the engagement with the family in addition to the fitness night in the sense of the meals themselves is their parent participation in the wellness in the committee and kind of what you do as far as you policies yes there are actually on the committee we do have parents parents as many as can come because our meetings are during the school day so some of them might be a working parent but they're always free to send e mails of any comment concerns any feedback that they would like to be brought up to the committee but we do have pair involvement on our side the reports are that yes thank you mr berg one of the things that caught my attention with your testimony was the breadth of the type of school and i think you said thirty seven thousand maybe and then twenty one how does it work with especially the small schools in my district is mainly suburban and rural in your smaller districts and how they participate and i guess if you can walk me through how a school participates through the co op and how that would be different then if they were in a more traditional sense purchasing their their food food service every school district regardless of size they get about twenty percent of their food money from the commodity program but they buy the other eighty percent from somebody so the key is how can i get the somebody to deliver the twenty percent because it's extra money to that person and it makes it se to the school district we do all of the contractual obligations for meeting all the federal and state law on purchasing because we're so big the manufacturer says i don't need an estimate  a question of volume making the small school district functional and then having that function follow the commercial outline so that whoever they get their normal food from the commodity food not only comes from them but comes in the same format you don't have a different chicken nugget you don't have a different sliced apple region geographic region or your schools all the state of california all the state based on the food stamps snap and can a record since california's already gone through this direct certification process can can you tell us more about how long the process how much did it cost  how much money district and state education department would need to implement these practices or did it save money did it save administrative costs you also said that california made improvements over time and i know this has been a four year process that's far but can occasion in two thousand and four we authored a state law in two thousand and five or sponsored state law to require the state to develop the database which was built with about two hundred thousand in federal funds that were used to create a match a computer patch in effect in between the food stamp database and the department of education database it costs very little to operate on an ongoing basis because technology is so sophisticated today the savings in the benefits are really along this side of the table at school sites where there is not an obligation anymore to process those applications to handle the paper tickets and to do all the administrative work that money can be ploughed into better nutrition so the upfront c were very minimal paid for by a small federal grant which i should point out you will have expanded in the conference agreement of this year's budget for two thousand and ten you proposed to put in twenty two million dollars in grants to other states to make the systems the minimum so that these innovations you're hearing today become the national model and then you also have the california performance improved over time the accuracy of this process depends on a number of variables there are jose luis  rivera there are lots of variations on the names and the ability of the software to more precisely put that together and get the right students certified for free meals has been an ongoing process and we expect improve but the big leap forward will occur when you will permit california and the rest of the nation to use the data that's in the medicaid database were proposed earlier there are another one point three million california students names ready to be put into  but how would we be to enable to get these data systems to work well together and and also how about the databases that are now being developed for now child left behind with that be a possibility in california the food stamp and medicaid databases are housed within the same computer mainframe system into the matching process will be reasonably painless i can't speak for the other jurisdictions and their databases but by and large that is a trend in social services integrating the database functions to save money in time of crisis so the intermediate step to do that involves a change in federal law more that involves any other change at a state or federal level in terms of the technology but regarding  the outcome of this and what's needed to make it happen you do need to direct us to work with the department of education at a federal level to figure out of some of this stuff could occur nationally at a simple automatic level and if the right technical could be provided to the states they could learn from the experience of california and other innovators in this area within the existing system there's a wide range of success rate some states are below sixty percent some states are at a hundred and show you all ought to take those innovations and establish them as the minimum for thank you we've been notified that there's going to be a vote coming up and they'll be five votes which means that we're probably down there for a good hour so what i'm going to do is instead of having five minutes we'll be three minutes so hopefully the rest of our colleagues get a chance to offer a lesson we don't want to hang you all up here for an hour while we're down there voting so thank you madam chairwoman a e for the future that we really need to emphasize i was curious as you're learning curriculum at any point within the school district address responsible parenting in preparing students  and language translators and during the school day with our physical education department and our nurses we have we have a curriculum education on healthy eating and  what it means to have good meals and good choices so on both levels not only are we educating the child but we also focus and through our parent workshops and staff development we educate we concentrate on educating the parents as well as what is good eating and what they should be looking for as far as healthy choices thank you you know i'm sorry that was actually three minutes ok sorry i'm just watching a lot we can't llison thank you for providing a student's perspective let me ask this question other than a richer reimbursement for the food supplies that are necessary for the program if there were grants concepts developed what would be the most creative use of those grant dollars what's not being done or what's being done now that could be done better the kind of results that you would like if you had those out of dollars and what would you do if if if we had access to those grant dollars reinvest in our infrastructure so that we could start cooking our meals on site as an example in maryland look there are more chickens than people in that state but  lower your costs i mean if i'm paying a processor two or three million dollars a year out of my budget to turn chicken into the goods when i turn chicken into roasted chicken  pesto makes a little more sense to anyone else in that regard just regarding the facilities gap it's estimated that in los angeles alone there are six hundred million dollars of unfunded facilities needs for everything from hand washing sinks to actual chair so that all three thousand students at an overcrowded high school can eat the backlog is tremendous and the conference agreement for us two thousand and ten budget will have made a small downpayment towards that unfunded problem anyone else ok you need not only to provide chicken and pesto sauce but you also need to provide the chicken nugget you need to provide what the child wants and make it healthy hide the hide the non fried chicken nugget in whole wheat batter provide healthy meals that are also attractive if you just provide healthy meals that aren't attractive as you said they're just going to the trash can ok then if i have a little time left i don't know if i do for ten seconds it was nice hearing underweight and it was almost and then called what your data was we started about five or six years ago and up in adam program in the creation exercise without the exercise you're not going to you not going to make it and you have to have both we have a turkey trot every thanksgiv i thought about a hundred people would show up twelve hundred showed up the first year two thousand the next year for the school that shows up the most kids they get a thousand dollars put into their schools and we've done some innovative things there and and to give you an idea  teach young people how to be healthy to begin with korean war veterans were autopsy and these are young men that were killed during the korean war and they already had a significant amount of coronary artery disease so you need to start that at a very young age to prevent these kinds of problems happening in just a statement allison i'm a doctor and and we would have these drug detail guys come by and bring a fiber biscuit and i would take it home and give it to my beagle dog and he wouldn't eat it i wouldn't prescribe it to  understand where you're coming from if you can't stomach the food you're not going to eat it and the sad part is six months ago i've been in afghanistan and sixteen million people in that country level a dollar a day they would love to have what we throw out so we  need not to do that i think the other point that i want to commend you all on is purchasing local i think that we're encouraging people around the country to do i think it's a tremendous thing to do and i'll stop and let you have any  well i'd like to say that while this policy is an ongoing we look at it with the nutrition committee on a regular basis to see how it can be improved and whether we're hearing through it which is very hard to control when sometimes you recently had an audit from the state controllers office in the state of new york and they were very pleased with our in depth policy and what we had done because we have made significant changes and one of the most significant changes i think that we've made a very proud of as a result of the posse is that we have brought the of the month where our food capture tears actually cook but make the cupcakes once a month to celebrate the birthdays and their made with whole wheat flour what this is done is on the early grade level the elementary principles are statically happy because for now it takes less instructional time to celebrate a birthday that took two on the cafeteria once a month and also we're controlling what the child eats and this and this came as a result of the wellness policy so again we're we're very pleased that this came into being and we are looking at  we have only about two minutes to get down to vote i want to thank everybody this is very very informative on all the information that you have given us to hear what's going on the innovative programs what we can do to have it little bit more flexible so you can do the best that you can and hopefully we're on a to a good start on giving good to a lot of children of this country and i thank all of you and alice and i thank you for coming down here and starting something in your school because as we said this is all about the children totally about the children so with that i will thank my ranking member for working with us i want to mention that there's been a great deal of interest in this hearing and we have received many requests written testimony from other organizations so i will have from the new york state record any member who wishes follow up questions in writing to the witnesses with the majority staff within the requested time without objection this hearing is adjourned and thank you very much