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88–720 PDF 2003

S. HRG. 108–078

REVIEW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S

INITIATIVES REGARDING THE SCHOOL LUNCH

AND BREAKFAST PROGRAMS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 4, 2003

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.agriculture.senate.gov

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Chairman

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia

NORMAN COLEMAN, Minnesota

MICHEAL D. CRAPO, Idaho

JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri

ELIZABETH DOLE, North Carolina

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa

TOM HARKIN, Iowa

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota

THOMAS A. DASCHLE, South Dakota

MAX BAUCUS, Montana

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas

ZELL MILLER, Georgia

DEBBIE A. STABENOW, Michigan

E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

HUNT SHIPMAN, Majority Staff Director

DAVID L. JOHNSON, Majority Chief Counsel

LANCE KOTSCHWAR, Majority General Counsel

ROBERT E. STURM, Chief Clerk

MARK HALVERSON, Minority Staff Director

(II)

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

HEARING(S):

Review the Federal Government’s Initiatives Regarding the School Lunch

and Breakfast Programs ...................................................................................... 01

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS

Cochran, Hon. Thad, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, Chairman, Committee

on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ............................................................. 01

Harkin, Hon. Tom, a U.S. Senator from Iowa, Ranking Member, Committee

on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ............................................................. 02

Baucus, Hon. Max, a U.S. Senator from Montana ................................................ 05

Conrad, Hon. Kent, a U.S. Senator from North Carolina .................................... 04

Stabenow, Hon. Debbie A., a U.S. Senator from Michigan .................................. 06

WITNESSES

Greenstein, Robert, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy

Priorities, Washington, DC ................................................................................. 24

MacDonald, Gaye Lynn, Food/Nutrition Services Manager, Bellingham Public

Schools, Bellingham, Washington, accompanied by Paula Cockwell,

Manager of Nutrition Services, Adams School District 14, Littleton,

Colorado; Gail Kavanaugh, Vicksburg-Warren School District, Vicksburg,

Mississippi; Teresa Nece, Food Service Director, Des Moines, Iowa, and

Marshall Matz, Counsel, on behalf of the American School Food Service

Association, Washington, DC .............................................................................. 09

Panel I

Borra, Susan T., Immediate Past President, American Dietetic Association,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 33

Heiman, Dennis J., Principal, Muscatine High School, Muscatine, Iowa ........... 41

Kemmery, Robert J., Jr., Executive Director, Student Support Services,

Baltimore County Public Schools, Towson, Maryland ...................................... 35

Kozak, Jerry, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Milk Producers

Federation, Arlington, Virginia, on behalf of the National Milk Producers

Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association ............................. 39

Payne, Melanie, Child Nutrition Director, Opelika City Schools, Opelika,

Alabama ................................................................................................................ 37

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Conrad, Hon. Kent ........................................................................................... 52

Borra, Susan T. ................................................................................................. 77

Greenstein, Robert ............................................................................................ 66

Heiman, Dennis J. ............................................................................................ 101

Kemmery Robert J. .......................................................................................... 88

Kozak, Jerry ...................................................................................................... 95

Page

IV

PREPARED STATEMENTS—CONTINUED

MacDonald, Gaye Lynn .................................................................................... 56

Payne, Melanie ................................................................................................. 92

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

Leahy, Hon. Patrick, (Some answers were not provided) ............................. 106

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REVIEW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S

INITIATIVES REGARDING THE SCHOOL

LUNCH AND BREAKFAST PROGRAMS

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2003

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND FORESTRY,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Thad Cochran, [Chairman of the Committee], presiding.

Present or submitting a statement: Senators Cochran,

Chambliss, Coleman, Harkin, Leahy, Conrad, Baucus, Lincoln, Miller, and Stabenow.

STATEMENT OF HON. THAD COCHRAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

MISSISSIPPI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will please come to order.

It is a pleasure for me to chair this first hearing of our Agriculture Committee on the subject of the reauthorization of the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs. These programs provide free or low-cost meals to more than 25 million children throughout our United States each day.

Today we will hear from three panels of witnesses to help us review these important programs, including representatives from the

American School Food Service Association and others who are wellrespected authorities on these programs.

I want to welcome all of you and thank you for the preparation

of your statements in advance that you provided to the committee

for us to review, and we appreciate all of you making the special

effort to provide this valuable assistance to help us better understand the programs and how we may be able to improve them.

I am pleased to have other members of the committee here. Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa is the senior Democrat member of the

committee and has chaired this committee before; and Senator

Kent Conrad from North Dakota.

At this time, I will be happy to yield to them for any comments

or statements they would like to make.

Senator Harkin.

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STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

IOWA, RANKING MEMEBER, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

Senator HARKIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and again

I commend you for holding this hearing and for making this the

first hearing that you have held as chairman of the committee.

That is significant.

Of all of the issues that have come before this Senate Agriculture

Committee in all the years I have been on it, there is none that

has been more bipartisan—or, I should say even nonpartisan—than

the issue of child nutrition. The issue of school lunches, breakfasts,

and the WIC program have all generated broad support on both

sides of the aisle.

Of course, we are always looking for new ways and better ways

of doing things and meeting the nutritional needs of our kids in

school, but this has certainly been a very, very bipartisan effort.

Our Federal child nutrition programs are a success story that

spans over half a century. School lunch, breakfast, and after-school

nutrition are vitally important to healthy and productive lives of

our Nation’s kids. I want to join the chairman in taking my hat off

to the school food service professionals who are indispensable to the

progress, many of whom are here today.

How many are with American School Food Service Association

here?

[A show of hands.]

Senator HARKIN. Oh, there you go. Welcome. I know a lot of us

will be seeing you later on today also.

Despite the success, there are huge challenges. Far too many

children who need schools meals are not getting them. Their families may not be able to afford the 30 or 40 cents charged for a reduced-price breakfast or lunch. Of children who eat school lunches,

not even one in three receives a school breakfast, and only one in

five receives a summer meal. Surely, we cannot leave no child behind if children lack the nutrition they need for learning.

In addition, we have a childhood health and nutrition crisis in

America. I want to repeat that: We have a childhood health and

nutrition crisis in America. Overweight and obesity among children

and adolescents has tripled in the last 20 years. Their rates of high

cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes have shot up

dramatically.

If we stay the current course, this crisis can only expand like a

snowball barreling down a mountain. Our former U.S. Surgeon

General David Satcher concluded that the combined cost of overweight, obesity, and lack of physical activity—let me underline

that—lack of physical activity—the combined cost of this in lost

lives and impaired health actually exceeds the toll taken by tobacco

in our society.

On the surface, it may seem contradictory to call for increasing

participation in school meals in the face of growing childhood overweight and obesity, but the opposite is true. If children can obtain

or afford balanced, nutritious school meals, unhealthy eating is frequently the alternative.

3

In other words, school meals are not the problem, but they are

the essential part of the solution to childhood overweight and obesity.

To be sure, schools should further improve the nutritional quality

of their meals, and schools have to do more to promote physical exercise and fitness. I saw a figure the other day, Mr. Chairman, that

over 80 percent of elementary school kids in America do not even

have 1 hour of PE a week. What can you expect when kids do not

even get physical exercise?

Let us put the focus where it belongs. School vending machines

and a la carte counters are filled with products from companies

that seem determined to super-size everything—and everybody— within reach of their ever-present advertising. How in the world

does a healthy, balanced meal stand a fair chance against billions

of dollars’ worth of marketing?

Common sense calls for increasing the availability of sound nutrition in schools and limiting the sales of competing foods that

crowd out healthier choices. Instead of picking this up, which kids

can get—potato chips, with all the fat and cholesterol—they ought

to be picking up this orange and eating it.

The problem is that the potato chips are available, and the orange is not, and therein lies the problem.

We started a pilot program—I did—in the last Farm bill to offer

free fruits and vegetables in schools. Four States signed up for it

plus one Indian Reservation, 100 schools in total, and the preliminary data is that when kids get free fruits and vegetables in school,

they eat them. We have one principal from Muscatine, Iowa today

who will testify as to what happened in Muscatine with that program.

We should also build on these pilots and increase access to school

breakfast and summer food and provide these free fruits and vegetables to kids in our schools. In the absence of any better alternative—and I say this forthrightly—in the absence of any better alternative, we should ban school vending machines and regulate a

la carte sales.

[Applause.]

Senator HARKIN. To attain these goals, additional funding above

baseline levels is critical. We are going to have to fulfill our responsibility here in Congress.

I just want to say one other thing, Mr. Chairman—and you have

indulged me in giving me a little more time here—I just want to

say one other thing. Our school food service people are doing an

outstanding job. We are meeting the dietary guidelines today better

than we ever have in the past. There is one problem. The dietary

guidelines are wrong, and we are just beginning to learn that.

Look at the last issue, the January issue, of Scientific American—a very nonpartisan magazine, to be sure. It is called ‘‘The

Government’s Flawed Diet Advice.’’ Nutritionists, doctors, and

health professionals have been looking at our food pyramid for a

number of years, and the conclusion among—well, I would not say

100 percent—but I would say close to 100 percent of them is that

our old food pyramid is wrong, and we need a new one. Now, that

has nothing to do with this, but I am just saying that part of our

obligation here is to get the USDA to move very rapidly to come

4

up with a new food pyramid so that the school food service people

can meet the new types of dietary guidelines we have with all the

expertise that you have.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you and

my colleagues in a bipartisan manner on this legislation which is

so critical to our children and our future, and thank you for indulging me.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Harkin.

Senator Conrad.

STATEMENT OF HON. KENT CONRAD, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

NORTH DAKOTA

Senator CONRAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to echo the ranking member in thanking you for holding

this hearing. It is very timely to have done it today, and we appreciate it very much.

I want to salute the representatives of North Dakota who are

here—Kathy Grafsgaard, the Director of Child Nutrition Programs;

Dixie Schultz from Mandan, which is where my family hailed from

for many years; and Julie Tunseth from Grand Forks. They are in

charge of serving nearly 74,000 meals each day for school lunch in

North Dakota. We appreciate the job they do.

As Senator Harkin was speaking, I was reminded of a time when

I attended a meeting of this committee many years ago. Back when

I was a young man, I was in Washington, and came to a Senate

Agriculture Committee hearing on the question of nutrition. I will

never forget it. Senator McGovern from South Dakota was the

chairman at the time, and Senator Dole was on the committee—

and Senator Alan Ellender of Louisiana told the expert witness

who, as I recall, was from the State of Iowa, that he said had only

one question. The question was ‘‘What is this pablum?’’

The witness was taken aback at the question and laughed. He

then described pablum. Ellender said, ‘‘Well, I wanted to know because my daughter has fed that to our grandchildren, and they are

all as fit as hogs.’’

[Laughter.]

Senator CONRAD. I do not know if we are serving pablum in our

schools. I rather doubt that it is part of the breakfast program, but

we all understand how important it is that people have good nutrition.

My grandmother, who raised me, was a devotee of Adele Davis’

‘‘You are what you eat’’ and believed very strongly proper nutrition

and in physical exercise.

However, when I look across the spectrum and look at all the indices for our younger generation, they are missing out on both

counts. The nutrition is inadequate and furthermore, too little

physical exercise. As a result, we have obesity dramatically on the

rise in this country.

As recently as in my grandfather’s generation, they milked cows

before they went to school in the morning—getting their exercise

even before they went to school. In my time, it was not an hour

of exercise each week like kids now are getting but an hour a day

playing sports.

5

I am very concerned about this trend and the related nutrition

and obesity issues, and again, thank you Mr. Chairman for holding

this hearing to examine them.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Conrad.

[The prepared statement of Senator Conrad can be found in the

appendix on page 52.]

Senator Baucus.

STATEMENT OF HON. MAX BAUCUS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

MONTANA

Senator BAUCUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As I was listening to the testimony not only of Senator Conrad

but also Senator Harkin, I was reminded of several years ago in

Montana, at the Fork Pack Indian Reservation, when I was talking

to some of the high school students there on the reservation who

were appalled at the food that they were getting in the school

lunch and school breakfast program there and the USDA guidelines.

In fact, they took the issue into their own hands, and I was very

proud of them. One of the students was an editor of the school

paper, and she wrote a column about how bad things were and got

several students to go on strike, that is, to just not participate and

also not go to school for a couple days, because in their view, the

program was so deficient.

The strike lasted for a while, but they finally had to give in, and

USDA did not make the changes, and it really was sad to me, but

it was an indication to me of just how bad things were, at least at

that time, on that reservation and in that school, and to what great

lengths the kids were willing to go to try to get some changes.

I must confess that I do not know at this point what the changes

are and whether the program is much better, but right now, having

said all this, I am going to find out, and we are going to see what

can be done to make sure the changes are there. It really is appalling, and it has been said before, with the obesity that is growing

in this country, and diabetes which is also growing in this country—and I also think that to some degree kids think they are somewhat entitled these days to certain things, material and to eat certain things, much different than was the case 20 or 30 years ago—

there is just too much of a sense of entitlement among kids today.

I do not know what the solutions are. The solutions clearly have

a lot to do with better programs and better nutrition, better dietary

guidelines. There is no doubt about that. The problem runs even

deeper.

Most of this comes down to attitude and self-esteem and self-respect, which kids apparently, for reasons I do not fully understand,

do not have enough of these days to watch better what they eat,

demand and want better food and so forth.

It also means perhaps some program, a public-private partnership with the fast food industry, to see if there is some way to

make some of those products a little more nutritious than they are.

It is a huge problem, but I do know the basic premise is totally

accurate, that is, that the better the food, the better the quality of

the food, the better lives our kids are going to lead in school and

can be more upbeat and proud and feel better and study better and

6

so on. It is true of all ages. The WIC program, for example, is extremely important for infants and for the mothers, because if there

is low birthweight, clearly, the kids are much more at risk; and

also, the kids do a lot better when they are fed properly. It is a

huge issue.

I am reminded of something I saw on the news just a short while

ago, that 800 million people in this world are starving. That is

worldwide, of course. In our country, I suppose a few probably are

starving, but there is no excuse for the biggest, wealthiest country

in the world, the only superpower in the world by far, to not be

sure that all of its kids have very healthy diets and are doing very

well nutritionally. It is the very least we can do.

I commend you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing, and I

hope we can make a difference here.

I also welcome Linda Adahold from Montana, who is with Montana Food Services—I believe she is in the audience. We do not

have a lot of folks in Montana, so when somebody from Montana

shows up, we are pretty proud.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Baucus.

Senator Stabenow.

STATEMENT OF HON. DEBBIE A. STABENOW, A U.S. SENATOR

FROM MICHIGAN

Senator STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me offer

congratulations. This is our first opportunity in the committee with

you as Chairman, and I look forward to working with you. I would

also like to comment our ranking member for his leadership as

well.

I have to comment—Senator Harkin held up an orange—that is

one of the few fruits that we do not grow in Michigan, but next

time, I want equal time for an apple or a cherry or blueberries,

peaches, and grapes—I could go on and on.

I would also like to welcome our panel. I have good friends on

the panel. I look forward to working with you, as we move forward.

I want to apologize in advance. I have three committee meetings

happening at the same time, so if I leave, it is not because of what

you are saying. I will stay as long as possible.

I want to thank and welcome the members here from the Michigan School Food Service Association and other folks from Michigan

who are here—I want to thanke all of you for coming. Many of you

are returning and have been working on these issues for many

years.

The child nutrition reauthorization bill is one of the committee’s

top priorities for this year, and we need your input and welcome

it. This is a tremendously important bill, as we all know, that covers some of our Nation’s most important nutrition programs, ranging from the School Lunch and School Breakfast Program, the

Child and Adult Feeding Program, and WIC. These programs impact people’s lives directly. I welcome you.

These programs are very important in Michigan. Last year, we

had over 132 million school lunches that were served to children

in our State. That is quite amazing—and think of the difference

7

that that has made in their lives—and I want to thank the people

in the audience who have made that possible.

We all know that a hungry child cannot learn, and each of you

does your part each and every day to make sure that our most

basic and important needs are met for our children.

Many of the other programs that will be included in our reauthorization are equally important to Michigan. Half of all babies

born in Michigan are eligible for WIC. Each day in my State, over

66,000 children and seniors attend day care centers that benefit

from the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Twenty-five schools

in Michigan are participating this year in the fruit and vegetable

pilot, and I am hearing wonderful things about that and am looking forward to expanding that program as well.

The list just goes on and on, and simply put, the USDA nutrition

programs provide critical help to people in my State of Michigan,

as I know they do in the States of everyone who is here.

I am looking forward to working with the committee to devise a

bill that increases access, increases awareness regarding nutrition

and increases critical funding and support for these programs.

I am particularly interested in exploring ways to reduce paperwork for schools and to make sure that hungry children get the

meals they need by reducing the current three-tier eligibility to a

two-tier eligibility.

[Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. I did not mention it, but at the first applause

that we had for one of Senator Harkin’s statement, I did not say

anything about the applause because I agreed with what he said,

but for fear that I may not agree with everything that everybody

else may say, I do not think we ought to turn this hearing into a

pep rally of any kind. This is a serious undertaking to hear from

the witnesses whom we have invited to testify before the committee

today, and that is the reason we are here, and to hear their suggestions and observations about the way these programs have been

administered, the suggestions for changes in the authority the Department of Agriculture has to administer the programs, the funding levels that are authorized in the legislation. There are a lot of

very important factors and facts and information that we need in

order to do our job to write this legislation so that it can meet the

needs of all the children and others in our society who are served

by these programs.

It is with that frame of mind and attitude that we are going to

proceed—not as a political rally and not to express your favor or

displeasure with anything that any witnesses says or any member

of this committee says. I hope you will honor that as we proceed

with the hearing—and that is not to criticize anything Ms.

Stabenow said or to say that I disagree with anything she said, but

I just thought we ought to start now at the beginning, with the

Senators’ statements, to have that understanding.

I apologize for interrupting you. You may continue.

Senator STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is perfectly

all right. I have a couple more points, but I do hope for the record

that we will recognize that there was extreme applause for that

last point—and I will assume applause that will be unheard for the

next point.

8

As a member of the Budget Committee, I also want to put into

the record that I stand behind the child nutrition forum’s proposal for allocating an additional $1 billion per year for reauthorizing

these important programs. We will be bringing a budget resolution

before the Senate in the next few months, and I am hopeful that

we will have strong bipartisan support coming from the committee

to do that.

I would just say that as a Senator representing a very diverse

State—we are very proud to represent a large State that grows

many fruits and vegetables—there are many ways that we can

meet the needs of children with our fruits and vegetables. It is a

win-win for agriculture as well as for children and seniors and others.

We made progress in last year’s Farm bill when we required that the USDA purchase an additional $2 billion a year in fruits and

vegetables. I was very proud to lead and sponsor that effort. We

are running into trouble implementing that with the Department,

and I am hopeful, Mr. Chairman, that we can work together to correct that particular issue.

There are many other things that we need to be focused on— more fruits and vegetables in the WIC program and possibly we

need to mandate that change in order to make sure that that happens. In conclusion, I would just say that I cannot forget my dairy

producers in Michigan, who provide such an important role in providing milk for children with every meal.

Mr. Chairman, this is an important bill and an important set of

issues. There is nothing more fundamental than nutrition and giving every child the opportunity to be healthy so that they can succeed in life.

Again, I welcome the witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me welcome our panels. We have three panels of witnesses who will testify before the committee this morning.

First, representatives of the American School Food Service Association; and a second panel represented by Robert Greenstein, Center

on Budget and Policy Priorities; and a third panel of other representatives of the American Dietetic Association and some local

administrators of child nutrition programs and school administrators.

Our first panel is led by Ms. Gaye Lynn MacDonald, who is the

Food/Nutrition Services Manager of Bellingham Public Schools in

Bellingham, Washington. She is accompanied by others representing the American School Food Service Association, including Ms.

Paula Cockwell, who is Manager of Nutrition Services at the

Adams School, District 14 in Littleton, Colorado; Ms. Gail

Kavanaugh, of the Vicksburg-Warren School District in Vicksburg,

Mississippi; Ms. Teresa Nece, Food Service Director in Des Moines,

Iowa; and Mr. Marshall Matz, who is counsel to the American

School Food Service Association here in Washington, DC

Ms. MacDonald, we welcome you and your colleagues. I must tell

you that I am going to have to leave to go over to an Appropriations Committee meeting of Republican Senators where we are organizing that committee for this Congress, and I am going to leave

the committee under the tender mercies and astute chairmanVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:47 Aug 12, 2003 Jkt 088720 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 88720.TXT1 SAG1 PsN: SAG1
9

ship—temporarily—of my good friend from Iowa, who has agreed

to be here while I go to this other meeting. I will return, but Senator Harkin is going to assume the duties of the chair to hear the

testimony of this group, and I will return as soon as I can.

Thank you, Senator Harkin.

Senator HARKIN. Does that mean I will get some more money

from the Appropriations Committee?

The CHAIRMAN. You never know.

[Laughter.]

Ms. KAVANAUGH. Senator, before you leave, I would like as one

of your constituents from Mississippi to make one statement.

I totally agree with the statement that was submitted by ASFSA

to the committee, and I would like to address one issue before you

do have to leave us, and that is in the area of the program access

under the reduced meals that we are talking about.

In my State of Mississippi, as other States across the Nation,

many of our children and families who qualify for the reduce-price

category are finding it very hard to pay for these meals and to

come up with the 40 cents for lunch and the 40 cents for breakfast.

Increasingly, we are seeing food service administrators, food

service managers, principals and teachers having to reach into

their own——

The CHAIRMAN. If you want me to go and get some money for

these programs, I need to go to the Appropriations Committee.

Ms. KAVANAUGH. Well, I would just like to say that it is an issue

in Mississippi.

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate your pointing that out, and we have

talked about it before, and we will continue to listen to your concerns and suggestions for changing it.

Ms. KAVANAUGH. Thank you, Senator.

Senator HARKIN [presiding.] Thank you. We will proceed, then,

Ms. MacDonald.

All of your statements will be made a part of the record in their

entirety. We would appreciate it if you could summarize and hit

the high points of your statement for us within—we will use the

timer—why don’t we take about 5 minutes per person, and if we

need more, we can extend it, but let us try to keep to about 5 minutes.

Again, I join the chairman in welcoming all of you here, and Ms.

MacDonald, the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF GAYE LYNN MACDONALD, FOOD/NUTRITION

SERVICES MANAGER, BELLINGHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS,

BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN

SCHOOL FOOD ASSOCIATION

ACCOMPANIED BY PAULA COCKWELL, MANAGER OF NUTRITION

SERVICES, ADAMS SCHOOL DISTRICT 14, LITTLETON,

COLORADO;

10

GAIL KAVANAUGH, VICKSBURG-WARREN SCHOOL DISTRICT,

VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI;

TERESA NECE, FOOD SERVICE DIRECTOR, DES MOINES, IOWA; AND

MARSHALL MATZ, COUNSEL, AMERICAN SCHOOL FOOD SERVICE

ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. MACDONALD. Thank you very much, and I appreciate the

Senator introducing the rest of the panel so that we can move on,

and you already acknowledged that we have a few hundred of the

best child nutrition administrators throughout the country with us

along with some of the representatives of the food service industry.

I do want to begin by thanking you and the committee for again

accommodating us in this very special tradition of holding this

hearing during our Legislative Action Conference. We are delighted

to be with you to provide some proposals to you for child nutrition.

The success and the security of a culture is often measured by

how it nurtures its children, and there is a traditional Masai greeting, ‘‘Kaseria n ingera,’’ that asks, ‘‘And how are the children?’’ If

the children are well, the society is well, and the future is secure.

Our statements will touch on how are the children in the United

States.

We have hungry children in our rural communities and our

urban cities. We also have the paradox, as you pointed out, of overweight and obesity. We believe that the school meal programs are

part of the solution to both of these problems.

We also believe that this is a pivotal year for child nutrition

through the reauthorizing of the programs that expire in 2003, and

certainly these programs can improve health outcomes for children

and further the goals of No Child Left Behind.

I will frame our proposals in three areas—program access,

healthy children, and program integrity. As you heard from Ms.

Kavanaugh, many children from families qualified in the reduced

price category are not able to participate in the program because

they cannot afford the fee of 40 cents for lunch or 30 cents for

breakfast. While this may not seem like a lot of money to those of

us in this room, it is a lot of money for families from households

between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty line.

The reduced-price fee is a major barrier.

Senator HARKIN. If I might just interrupt, a lot of people forget

that sometimes these families may have three or four kids in

schools, so it is not just 40 cents a day—it could be up to maybe $2 a day.

Ms. MACDONALD. That is absolutely correct. Thank you for understanding that. That is a complex point, and it is very, very true.

We see that participation rates decline toward the end of the

month in this particular category if they are participating at all.

As you know, in the WIC program, all those with family incomes

below 185 percent of poverty and who otherwise qualify receive

benefits without charge. We are proposing that this same income

guideline be extended to the school nutrition programs. The reduced category is by far the smallest of the three tiers we currently

have. Less than 10 percent of all the meals are served to children

in the reduced category. Eliminating the reduced price category

and feeding children eligible up to 185% is our primary priority.

Also, consistent with GAO analysis showing a gap between the

cost to produce a school lunch, we would propose that Federal reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:47 Aug 12, 2003 Jkt 088720 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 88720.TXT1 SAG1 PsN: SAG1
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imbursement rates for all meal categories be increased. The current reimbursement rate of $2.14 for a free lunch is simply inadequate. The rates for reduced and paid meals are not adequate, either, resulting in higher and higher prices being charged to the

paying child.

It is also our recommendation that Congress extend the USDA

commodity program to the school breakfast program. Currently,

that program receives no USDA commodities. We recommend that

USDA contribute 5 cents in commodities for each breakfast served

in the program, which also serves American agricultural interests.

In terms of healthy children, the American School Food Service

Association is deeply committed to the health of our Nation’s children and continues to work collaboratively to further positive

health outcomes.

We are about good nutrition, not just providing food, and as you

know, we strongly supported amending the National School Lunch

Act to require implementation of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

According to the most recent USDA study on the subject, schools

are making very significant progress in implementing those guidelines. The fat content of reimbursable meals is significantly down,

and an increasing variety of fruits and vegetables is more readily

available.

Food service program operators have modified food preparation

methods, rewritten food product specifications to lower fat, sodium

and sugars. Industry has responded to our requests, and familiar

student favorites are part of meals meeting the dietary guidelines.

We further, however, recommend that an additional 10 cents per

meal be provided to schools to further improve their nutritional

quality. There are significant costs associated with meeting nutrition standards, such as continuing to increase the availability and

variety of fresh fruits and vegetables and to purchase products consistent with the dietary guidelines.

I want to note that in the past year, ASFSA has joined with the

National Dairy Council on a research project to determine if

changes in the way milk is marketed in schools can increase consumption of milk and the nutrition it provides. The results of the

test are very positive, and we have provided the committee a copy

of the report. There are again cost implications in implementing

the recommendations of the study.

As you pointed out, Senator Harkin, in the ‘‘Call to Action to Prevent Overweight and Obesity,’’ there are recommendations that

schools adopt policies ensuring that all foods and beverages available across school campuses and at school events contribute toward

eating patterns that are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for

Americans. We urge the Congress and the administration to implement the recommendation of Secretary Tommy Thompson and the

Surgeon General with regard to foods available in school.

Another important point is nutrition education, and financial

support for nutrition education continues to fade into oblivion. Not

many years ago, nutrition education was a Federal entitlement program—a small program, but one that provided guaranteed funding.

Nutrition education is now a discretionary program without any

12

funding. Students cannot learn to make healthy food choices without access to age-appropriate nutrition education.

At a minimum, we propose an entitlement of one-half cent per

meal be allocated to States to develop State and local infrastructure to deliver that nutrition education.

In terms of program integrity, ASFSA members are public employees, and we take very seriously our responsibility to administer

the programs consistent with the law. We are aware of concerns

raised by reports indicating that there may be an excessive error

rate in the number of students approved as eligible to receive free

and reduced-price benefits in the school meal programs. We question the underlying assumptions and conclusions of these studies.

It is a subject that we have discussed and continue to discuss almost weekly with USDA.

We believe that reasonable income verification requirements are

necessary to guarantee that the program is administered consistent

with the law. Eligible students should not be intimidated by excessive income verification requirements, and the greater the regulatory burden on the program, the greater the cost to produce a

meal.

In an effort to respond appropriately and reasonably, ASFSA has

made specific recommendations and continues to work with USDA,

and we look forward to working with you to resolve these concerns.

Last but not least, let me comment on food safety. Maintaining

high food safety standards in the Federal nutrition programs is

critical—— Senator HARKIN. Excuse me. I am not going to cut you off, and

I want to give you some more time, but could you go over your recommendations on the application process. It would be good for you

to go over those. Would you do that for me?

Ms. MACDONALD. Did you want the specific proposals or just

what we believe are reasonable here?

Senator HARKIN. Your recommendations.

Ms. MACDONALD. Yes. First, make school meal application approval valid for the full year. Second, expanded categorical eligibility. Currently if you qualify for Food Stamps or TANF, you automatically qualify for school meals. We are proposing to expand that

so in States where the eligibility guidelines for Medicaid, SSI, and

Children’s Health Insurance Programs are compatible with the

school meal eligibility, those programs would also allow children to

be directly certified for meals.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you.

Ms. MACDONALD. Also, there are applications that are called

‘‘error-prone’’ that is when the application income falls within $100

of the guideline. Studies have found that those tend to have more

errors in them than others.

We are proposing that we would verify 100 percent of those

error-prone applications at the time that they come in to us to further ensure that eligible children only are brought into the program.

Thank you, for allowing us to clarify in more detail those proposals. Now I will go on to food safety.

Data shows that in the majority of schools nationwide, the food

service staff demonstrate very high standards and performance in

13

the safe handling of food. We support public expectation that foods

be handled using consistently monitored and reinforced food safety

training and techniques for food service staff—as is found in most

school programs across the country.

The United States has the most abundant and safest food supply

in the world, and within the United States, school food service is

one of the safest providers. Food safety is not an area in which to

take any chances, particularly when we are talking about the Nation’s children.

Therefore, ASFSA has outlined and we are submitting with this

testimony a legislative proposal that ensures the development and

implementation of food safety systems in all schools participating

in the Federal school lunch program. The legislation includes funding for development of such a program, for training consistent with

the program, for facility improvements necessary to meet the

standards and development of a reasonable timeframe.

In conclusion, Senator Harkin, members of the committee, we

present to you a very full agenda for the child nutrition programs.

We do appreciate that we are meeting at a very difficult time for

the United States and that Congress has many issues to address.

However, the health and well-being of our children is paramount

to the security and the future development of our country. It is our

responsibility as those who work in child nutrition programs to

share our views on what is needed to assure that healthful meals

and nutrition education are available to all children.

We look forward to working with the committee and with the

Congress on the 2003 child nutrition reauthorization legislation.

We would be pleased to answer any questions that you may have,

and we do thank you all for your continuing support of child nutrition.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. MacDonald can be found in the

appendix on page 56.]

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Ms. MacDonald, and thank you for

your great leadership and all of you from the American School Food

Service Association.

I will open it with questions, and we will take 5 minutes each

as we go down the line on questioning.

I want to get one thing clear for the record, Ms. MacDonald. Is

your association advocating the two-tier system? I know you talked

about program integrity, a nd I am not certain that——

Ms. MACDONALD. Yes, we are.

Senator HARKIN. Oh, you are.

Ms. MACDONALD. Yes, we are. Our primary priority to take those

students currently in the reduced category and move them into

free.

Senator HARKIN. OK. I just wanted to make that very clear for

the record.

Ms. MACDONALD. Thank you.

Senator HARKIN. I concur with you on that, and I hope we can

move ahead in that direction this year to make this a two-tier system. In one of our panels coming up, Mr. Greenstein is going to be

talking about some of the errors that were made in some of the

data collection, and that will be good for the record.

14

Ms. MACDONALD. I believe he is, yes.

Senator HARKIN. Let me wade into an area that I mentioned in

my opening comment. As I said, you all have done a great job helping our kids meet the dietary guidelines under really tough circumstances. As I said, these kids are inundated every day with billions of dollars of advertising every year for unhealthy foods, yet

you are trying to get them to eat foods that are good for them and

that meet the dietary guidelines.

Now, this is not in your purview, but it is within ours, I believe,

and that is to ask the USDA to come up with a new set of guidelines based upon a new kind of food pyramid. I referred to the article in Scientific American.

It is clear—abundantly clear now—that the original food pyramid

is just wrong, and it needs to be changed. I am looking for any advice and suggestions that you all might have in that regard and

how you all think it might be changed to better reflect what we

know now in terms of childhood development, what is healthy,

what is not, what is good for growth. We know a lot more now than

we did 20 years ago.

Ms. MACDONALD. Well, we would hope that we could be part of

the discussion with USDA, and as you know, our concern is to advance good nutrition for all children, and we do believe, as you

stated, that school meals can be part of the solution. We are probably one of the only programs or areas in the country that still

models age-appropriate serving size, so we that is something that

we continue to promote.

We also, though, recognize that the issue of foods available in

schools is not limited to what is available in the cafeteria, that it

does extend to the total school environment as well. I am particularly pleased about your pilots, the fresh fruits and vegetables

pilot——

Senator HARKIN. I want to ask you about that.

Ms. MACDONALD [continuing]. If I may, I would like to defer to

Ms. Nece who, as a food service director in Des Moines, is actually

participating in the pilot.

Senator HARKIN. As a preface, Ms. Nece—and I welcome you

here again—but just as a preface, I put $6 million in the Farm bill

last year to do a pilot program. I had this theory that I wanted to

test. I tried to get rid of vending machines before, and I was not

very successful, so I wanted to try a new theory, and that is if

fruits and vegetables were available to kids during the day, free—

not just in the lunch room, but free, during the day—my theory

was that kids would eat them, and perhaps some of their consumption of some of this other stuff might go down.

Four States were involved—Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio,

and one Indian tribe in New Mexico—100 schools. That is the basis

of it, and I am just wondering what you have heard about it.

Ms. NECE. I am actually implementing the fruit and vegetable

pilot in three schools in Des Moines, Iowa. We have the program

in three buildings that are K–12, so it is an elementary school, a

middle school, and a high school. The program is awesome. It has

been very well-received by our student body, our administration,

and our teachers.

15

The students consume huge volumes of fresh fruits and vegetables, and that is the most exciting thing that you can see happen

on a daily basis when you walk into a high school cafeteria during

a block schedule break, and the cafeteria is abuzz with students

coming in for a fruit or vegetable break.

The building staff tell me that the vending machines have actually seen less volume of usage during those morning break periods

than previously. We have not seen any negative impact on school

meals participation; we have actually seen students come down and

have lunch with us who may not have previously set foot in that

particular high school cafeteria.

In the middle school, we are actually doing classroom distribution. We send a basket, which is a very large basket, to each and

every classroom each day, filled with at least three choices of fresh

fruits, vegetables, or dried fruits, and those baskets are empty at

the end of the day. If there is something that is a very studentpopular favorite such as a pineapple item, they will go from room

to room to find that pineapple.

That is probably the testimony of how successful this is, from

building administration, from teachers, and most important, from

the students themselves. We have had children try things that they

have never, ever tasted in their entire lives.

Senator HARKIN. We have Mr. Dennis Heiman here, the principal

of Muscatine High School, and he is going to talk specifically about

one high school in Muscatine and what they have done with that.

I thank you for that. Thank you for administering this program.

We have heard the same kinds of results from other States; Senator Stabenow earlier from Michigan, the same thing.

Senator Conrad.

Senator CONRAD. Thank you, Senator Harkin, and thank you to

our panelists for being here today.

In just a few minutes, I will have to leave to give a speech to

the State Treasurers from around the country about the budget

outlook for our Nation. All of these issues with the school lunch

and breakfast programs are linked with the budget. We talk out of

context too much of the time in Congress. We talk in the Defense

Committee about defense; we talk in the Agriculture Committee

about nutrition and aid to our farmers; and we talk in the Environment Committee about what we can do to clean up our air and

water. However, there are very few opportunities to bring all of the

issues together. That is the responsibility of the Budget Committee

of which I am a member.

I can tell you that the child nutrition programs are going to be

dramatically impacted by decisions made in the budget. Already,

we are in record deficit. The deficits that we are currently running

are the largest ever. We now see that we will be running budget

deficits, very large deficits, the entire rest of this decade. On top

of that, we will be taking all of the Social Security surplus funds

generated over the next decade—every last dime—and using it to

fund tax cuts and for other expenditures.

We are now in a circumstance in which the President is recommending additional tax cuts eventhough we all know the baby

boom generation is about to retire and put unprecedented demands

on the Federal Government for spending on programs like Social

16

Security and Medicare. In addition, he is recommending making

permanant the previously enacted tax cuts and an additional round

of tax cuts as a part of what he calls a ‘‘growth package.’’ On top

of that, the President also recommends a whole new savings plan

that will result in enormous cost to the Federal Treasury in the

second five years of that plan. All of these proposals will add to

deficits that—according to the President’s own analysis will spin

out of control in the next decade when the baby boomers retire.

I say this because all of this involves choices. Ms. MacDonald,

you are asking for an increase of spending on the school breakfast

and school lunch programs by a billion dollars each year. Those billion dollars would have to be borrowed. As I have indicated, all the

Social Security surplus is already being spent for other purposes,

so that fund cannot be used anymore.

This funding request raises the question—do you add to the deficit, do you raise taxes, or do you cut someplace else for this priority? We are going to have to wrestle with this question. I am not

going to ask you, Ms. MacDonald, because you do not have responsibility for putting together the budget. Although, in a way, you do

have that responsibility, because you are part of the American public, and the American public ultimately has to decide what makes

sense.

Personally I believe we are on a disastrous course as a country,

one that does not add up and one that is going to lead to very, very

serious—very, very serious—choices down the road for a future

Congress and a future President.

I will ask you one question, Ms. MacDonald. What is the evidence that parents are not able to meet the requirement for as little as 40 cents a meal for lunch? What tells you that they are having trouble meeting that? It seems like a very modest amount of

money.

Ms. MACDONALD. They telephone us, and they say, ‘‘You know,

we have these charge notices home that our child owes $6. I do not

understand.’’ ‘‘Well, you have to pay 40 cents.’’ ‘‘I cannot pay 40 cents.’’ They cry. I have had grandparents call me who are raising their

grandchildren. They cannot meet the 40 cents.

It is very, very difficult. As you heard from our witness from Mississippi, who has a poignant story that I will let her tell you, our

staff are paying money out of their pockets so that these children

can eat.

Ms. KAVANAUGH. Several years ago, Senator, I had a young

mother come to my office, and she needed some help with a charge

notice that she had gotten. She did not quite understand why she

owed the money. As we reviewed the paperwork on this particular

family, her eligibility had been changed to reduced price. She had

been free in prior years, but she had secured a job and was working, and in this particular year, she was very good at her job and

got a raise at her job. This automatically threw her into the reduced category where she lost any other benefits that she was getting including the free benefit.

At that time, she was actually in worse condition because she

had worked, because she was trying to provide for her family. She

17

requested a hearing, and we provided an official hearing. We did

have her bring in documentation of income, and we looked at all

that. It was conclusive that we were correct in determining that

she would fall into the reduced category.

As she left the hearing, she began to cry, and she said, ‘‘I do not

know what I am going to do.’’ Excuse me if I get emotional, but it

was an emotional situation. My superintendent was very emotional

over it.

As she left, I said, ‘‘We will find a way to take care of this child.’’ In the end, I talked with my superintendent, and I said, ‘‘I will find

an organization.’’ Well, I went to the ‘‘organization of Gail

Kavanaugh,’’ and I went back to my office and wrote out a check

for the rest of the year for the child’s meals. He was taken care of,

but we increasingly see this especially with our staffers out in the

lunch room—and these are low-paid positions anyway—that they

are not going to let a child go hungry. They will pay it out of their

own pocket.

Increasingly, we are seeing this. We see principals on a daily

basis who come to school with money in their pockets to give out.

Now, we are already talking about people who work for education

who, as you know, are some of the lowest-paid positions.

Yes, we are not asking for anything particularly for ourselves; we

are asking to help our working poor families.

Senator CONRAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Kent.

Senator Lincoln.

Senator LINCOLN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What an incredibly important series of hearings that we are having here today on the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, specifically, the school lunch and breakfast program.

I have to say that I am sure I am not the only Senator, but I

am one of the few Senators who carries my shopping list in my

pocket around here, and with twin boys who are in first grade now,

and myself making somewhat regular visits to the lunchroom in

the public schools that we attend, it is a critical issue for this Nation. If we truly, truly, truly believe that our children are our future, it must mean that everyone’s children are our future.

What a basic concept of providing a nutritionally sound meal to

those who are not going to get it anywhere else. It is amazing.

I have certainly been a long-time supporter of the programs, and

I certainly appreciate the strong commitment to child nutrition

that you on the panel as well as our chairman and our ranking

member have demonstrated on these issues.

Many people in this great country—and we realize how blessed

we are—but they do not realize that hunger remains a very serious

problem in the United States. Unfortunately, that is very true for

my home State of Arkansas. We are unbelievably bountiful in our

great State, but 2 years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture

Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program issued a report

that ranked Arkansas as one of the bottom five States for food security and hunger. When we took that to our farm community, they

were absolutely aghast. They did not have any idea that in all of

what they produced our great State, we had a broad number of

children across our State who were suffering from hunger.

18

In spite of the incredible and sizable agricultural sector we have

in Arkansas, almost 5 percent of households in Arkansas do not always have access to adequate food. I have been extremely involved

with foodbanks and other means of getting food into our households, but without a doubt, in dealing with the children, the breakfast and school lunch programs are the most critical in providing

these children the ability to meet their potential.

I sent two little boys off to school today with a good breakfast,

and I am blessed to be able to do that. To think of the mothers,

particularly the single mothers, who find themselves in the situation where they cannot provide that incredible need that those children have before they go to school, and then to think that as they

go to work, because of the meager income that they are making,

they are all of a sudden making their children ineligible for a program that they know is absolutely vital to their well-being.

The children’s nutrition programs in our schools are key to eliminating hunger and ensuring the health and well-being of our young

people. We all know that nutrition is an important determinant of

health and well-being. We can also point to teacher testimonials

and academic studies that demonstrate the further fact that children who eat a well-balanced meal, particularly a morning breakfast, perform better in the classroom. It is not rocket science. It is

just basics. It is no great leap, I do not think, to suggest that nutrition programs contribute to long-term academic success, which

pays great dividends in each student’s future, not to mention our

great Nation and not to mention health care costs and needs.

It is an unbelievable difference that we have been able to see

when we have been able to provide pediatric dentistry so that children can actually eat to get the nutrition they need.

I just applaud all of you for being here and for your willingness

to work with us in providing what is one of the most important

components of a safety net that many of our disadvantaged families, who are working desperately to provide for their children, rely

on to see them through the very difficult times.

Mr. Chairman, particularly in a time of economic recession, it is

critical that we look for ways to strengthen and broaden that safety

net. You all are the ones responsible not only for making this program efficient, making it available, making it nutritious, but certainly working with us to meet all the different demands that we

find ourselves in economically. To that, I just want to say how

much I appreciate what you do.

Again, having watched both my parents being involved in my

education and watching in the public schools where I grew up the

involvement of particularly our schools in a very low-income area

in the Mississippi Delta, and now to see in my own experience with

my own family the needs that the schools are providing for with

our children, it is just remarkable, and I hope we can continue to

work with you to make sure that that happens.

The Healthy Foods Program—again, exposure is so important.

Watching my children as I am trying to expose them to good and

healthy foods, encouraging them just to try a few things, and after

about three or four meals realizing that they actually like something, is great.

19

I want to ask Ms. Nece if you see in that fresh fruits program

a difference between the older children and the younger children

in terms of exposure, particularly as you introduce that program to

older children who may or may not have been exposed at an earlier

age. Do you see a difference there?

Ms. NECE. We see a difference in each of the areas, and part of

the difference is that in our school meal programs, we may not necessarily serve a whole piece of fruit in the same way as Senator

Harkin’s orange in the appearance of what it really is. One thing

we are doing in this pilot is to serve an entire piece of fruit.

I remember being in an elementary school classroom one morning where we served a whole fresh pear, and the students are saying, ‘‘This is a brand new fruit.’’ Then, we went down and got

canned pears so they could see that it was the same fruit in a different form.

It is that nutrition education piece that has been able to be

linked with not only offering a variety at the high school level, but

the most exciting thing is to see them actually choosing fresh fruits

and vegetables over going to the vending machine for any other

product that is in that machine. That is not 100 percent, and we

would never expect 100 percent at this point in time in our environment, but to get to the participation where students are making

that obvious selection.

Senator LINCOLN. Well, variety is so important. There is no

doubt about that. Being able to provide that variety is critical for

them to make those choices; there is no doubt. Also, the education

is critical, so that they do know that that fresh pear is the same

or relatively close to what they can also get in the lunch room.

It is so interesting when your children come home from school

and you ask them, ‘‘What did you have in the lunch room today?’’ and they talk about, ‘‘Well, it would have been great if you had

given me 50 cents before I left so I could have a cookie,’’ but it is

great to have the fresh fruits and the other things that are available to them. That is really wonderful.

Well, again, Mr. Chairman, we have a great task ahead of us and

that is to make sure—not just to say that we are going to nip and

tuck and do whatever it takes—that is what we have to commit

ourselves to doing in this country, and we should begin right here

in the Agriculture Committee, and that is making the commitment

that we are going to provide the nutritional needs that the future

workers and the future legislators of this great country are going

to get at a time when they need it most. I certainly think we can

find the means the wherewithal to be able to do it. You all do it

every day, and there is no reason we cannot here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Senator Lincoln.

Senator Coleman.

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I want to join in the thoughts of the distinguished

Senator from Arkansas and the others who have spoken. This

should not be a partisan issue. In 1999, the Minnesota legislature

funded a program initiated by an Independent Governor, a Republican House, and a Democratic Senate, called Fast Break to Learning. That program provide school breakfast at no charge to all stuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:47 Aug 12, 2003 Jkt 088720 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 88720.TXT1 SAG1 PsN: SAG1
20

dents at select elementary schools, setting up a study to see what

the results would be. The results are obvious. This is not rocket

science. This is common sense, Mr. Chairman.

The first year results of the Minnesota study showed improved

scores in standardized reading and math tests at Fast Break to

Learning Schools compared to a control group of schools. Earlier

studies at the University of Minnesota have also shown that you

have decreased discipline referrals with kids who eat school breakfast. It is tough for kids to learn if they have empty stomachs. That

is simply a reality.

I support the healthy choices concept. There is a parental role in

there somewhere. My 13-year-old daughter would take the carrots,

and my 16-year-old son would take the cookie. Having those

choices is important.

My distinguished colleague from North Dakota raised the issue

of budget, and that is a reality. I was Mayor of the capital city of

St. Paul, elected in 1993 during times of economic recession, and

we were faced with some difficult, tough times, gang summits, folks

out of work, and we made choices. Folks at my rec centers came

to me and said, ‘‘Mayor, we have to put more money into those rec

programs because kids are on the streets.’’ Folks at my libraries

said, ‘‘Mayor, we have to get more money into these libraries because kids need to read.’’ My police and fire people said, ‘‘We have

to get more money into public safety.’’ In St. Paul, if we did not

plow the streets when it snowed, I was in big trouble. We had all

of that, and I will tell you that the path we took is that we kept

a lid on taxes, and we enforced fiscal discipline, and in the end, I

had more money in my libraries when I was done and more money

in the rec centers and 18,000 new jobs and $3 billion in new investment.

We are all united on the purpose here, which is to make sure

that kids can eat, that moms and dads have good jobs. The debate

is simply how you get there, how do you generate economic growth.

The reality that we face now is that all levels of government are

facing very difficult times, and it is not just at the Federal level—

it is at the State level. My State has an over $400 billion deficit.

I worry, Mr. Chairman, about this stuff that we have to do. We

have to make the commitment.

I would ask the question—one of the keys to my success—again,

at the very local level, but you never forget where you came from,

and you bring that to the table—we worked very closely with folks

on the private side, particularly at a time when government was

really struggling. We did a number of creative programs with the

private side. Coca-Cola has a ‘‘Step With It’’ program, which is exercise and a whole range of other things. They have resources.

They have resources, and we are struggling for resources, and I

know there are choices to be made. Again, business is facing some

tough times. We are in economic recess.

I would raise the question as to the prospect of public-private

partnership, what role is it playing, how effective is it, and are

there things that we can do to promote that to make it easier for

you.

21

Ms. MACDONALD. We are working on some public-private partnerships particularly in the area of wellness and nutrition education. I am pleased that you raise that question.

It is also not just the wellness and physical activity that we are

working with them on but also nutrition education materials. I believe that in our proposal, I spoke about how we have materials

available, but States and local jurisdictions do not have an infrastructure to deliver that nutrition education and those materials.

We are hoping that the Congress will again join us in our publicprivate partnership and with you, see that we can get there.

As a commitment to working with us, we have with us at our

conference 160 members of industry. Our industry partners are key

to the success of these programs. They understand clearly the link

between healthy children and the effectiveness of their business.

They would much rather be putting their money into research and

development, production and equipment, than paying high health

care costs for their employees, or substitutes when there is lost

time when a parent has to go and pick up a sick child at school,

or having to put money into remedial reading programs for their

workers.

We are actively engaged in those partnerships and welcome your

cooperation as well.

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Senator Coleman.

Senator Miller.

Senator MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this

hearing. I have no questions of this panel.

I am sorry I am late. I have been listening to some of it, though,

on the audio down in my office. I do not have any questions of this

panel. I just want to say thank you for being here, thank you for

what you do on a daily basis. I have grandchildren and greatgrandchildren in the public schools of Georgia, and what you and

your colleagues do around this country is very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Ms. MACDONALD. Thank you.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Senator Miller.

I will recognize the other Senators who have just shown up in

a second, but I wanted to ask one followup question.

I mentioned the Scientific American article. Most of the nutritionists, sciences, doctors, and health care folks I have spoken with,

at the bottom of this new pyramid, at the very base of this, is

‘‘daily exercise and weight control.’’ As I mentioned earlier, 80 percent of our elementary school kids in America do not even get 1

hour of P.E. every week.

Now, you might say to yourself, ‘‘Well, that is not my department.’’ I am wondering—I like to think about how we put things

together and make a seamless system, and I am wondering if there

might not be some connectivity between the school lunch and

school breakfast programs and exercise.

I am wondering if we might partner somehow with schools in

doing this. Again, it has to be a carrot approach—I mean, it has

to be something where we provide a benefit, more to a school if in

fact they can show that they have an exercise program for their

22

kids on a weekly basis and that they have a program for weight

control and for exercise.

I am just wondering if this is something that you have ever

thought about or would you consider joining somehow in some demonstration programs of that nature.

Ms. MACDONALD. I am sure that you are aware that in October,

there was a Healthy School Summit here in Washington, DC,

chaired by the former Surgeon General.

Senator HARKIN. Very much so.

Ms. MACDONALD. At that conference, we brought together people

from every State who are interested in physical activity, the school

environment, and school meals. Teams were formed that went back

to every State. They are currently working on action plans that do

encompass, as you suggested, all the components of a healthy,

whole child.

We are working on that, and we would be very interested in any

further discussions that you might want to engage in.

Senator HARKIN. I appreciate it. We ought to look at that.

Senator Chambliss.

Senator CHAMBLISS. Thank you, Senator Harkin.

I do not have any questions for this panel other than just a couple of comments. First of all, I do have a statement for the record

that I will insert. I just want to thank you folks for the great work

you do and for your lobbying efforts. I have heard from every school

nutritionist in the State of Georgia over the last couple of weeks,

and that is always good, because we like to hear from you. In our

school system our nutritionists all the way down to the cafeteria

workers are very important folks. My wife just retired after 30

years of teaching in an elementary classroom, and my daughter is

a fourth-grade teacher, so they come home every night and remind

me of how important nutrition is to their students.

I thank you for the great work that you do, and we look forward

to moving through this process and reauthorizing this very important bill.

As Senator Miller knows two predecessors of ours, Senator Russell and Senator Talmadge, were primary motivators behind the

School Lunch Program, and he and I are both very proud of that.

We want to make sure that this program is strong and viable into

the future. Thank you for the great work that you do.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Senator Chambliss.

I now call on our former distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Leahy.

Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Senator Harkin.

I will put a full statement in the record.

As I look around, I see a lot of friends in this room. I have

worked on nutrition matters literally since the day I came here

when, as many of you know, back in the eighties, when I was

chairman of the committee, we put back the original name of the

committee so it became the ‘‘Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry

Committee.’’ I have been pleased with that, and I would hope that

we are able to reauthorize the program.

I will be submitting a letter cosigned by a number of Republican

and Democratic Senators hoping that there will be additional

money in the budget for that. As Senator Chambliss has said, we

23

do tend to hear from back home—I know I do—almost every week

when I am back in Vermont, somebody will stop me in the grocery

store or on the street or elsewhere to talk about the school lunch

program.

Ms. MacDonald, you mentioned that reimbursement rates have

not kept pace with inflation, especially because of the dietary

guidelines. What kinds of changes would we get if reimbursement

rates were raised specifically for the purpose of improving the nutritional quality of meals, something that Senator Harkin has

raised a number of times—and before you answer, just so you understand my concern—you go to some school lunch programs, and

they are really good, attractive, nutritional. Others, you have your

choice between the gray glop or the green glop. I realize it is different where you are. Sometimes it is regional. Sometimes it is regional things—a Western meal might not be good for an Easterner,

or a Southern meal might not be good for a Northerner, and back

and forth. You have to improve the nutritional quality of the meals,

but then you have to make them appealing to the kids. Otherwise,

of course, they are going to run out—if they have any loose change

or any money at all in their pockets, they are going to go somewhere else and get something that is not nutritional, and we lose

an opportunity, one, to teach them good nutrition and set those

habits, but also to make them healthier and, as every teacher will

tell you, they are going to learn better.

What kinds of changes would we see if reimbursement rates were

raised?

Ms. MACDONALD. Those of us who administer the programs are

committed to improving that nutritional quality of the meal. There

are significant costs submitted in our statement, to doing so in

terms of providing more variety of fresh fruits and vegetables,

whole grains, and purchasing products that meet the dietary guidelines in their specifications.

As you so correctly pointed out, there is a vast difference in programs across the country in terms of the support and the infrastructure that they have and the likes and dislikes of the students.

You really need to give the directors the flexibility to write their

specifications for purchasing what is appealing to the kids in that

area.

We all want to add more fresh fruits and vegetables, and with

the transportation costs and availability you would see there is no

argument among any of us in promoting that.

Senator LEAHY. I agree with that. I started a Farm to Family

Program for farmers’ markets to be able to use everything from

WIC coupons to foodstamps. I go to a local farmers’ market almost

every Saturday morning back in Vermont. I love going there. I see

everybody I have known from days when I was in grade school

right on up—people I knew from the time I was able to walk. I

have seen in this farmers’ market and many others around our

State a tremendous improvement—one, in the number of people

who can actually sell their products there—they have a market—

and people are now buying nutritional things. We do not grow oranges in Vermont, but there is a lot less of the potato chips and

a lot more of the carrots and the beans and the fresh corn, peas,

24

and so on. There are things that we can do, and it can be a winwin situation.

Ms. MACDONALD. I attended the Farm to School Conference, and

it is a program that is wonderful. Many of our schools are already

participating in that. It is an area that more and more of our members are excited about and partnering. Thank you so much for your

leadership on that issue.

Senator LEAHY. Thank you. Mr. Matz has actually seen some of

those with me.

I apologize, Mr. Chairman. We have Secretary Ridge and Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Muller at the Judiciary Committee, and I will have to go back.

Thank you.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you. Tell them that homeland security

depends on healthy kids, too.

Senator LEAHY. There you go.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you all very much for being here. We

will now move to our second panel. Again, through you, thanks to

all the American School Food Service people all over the country.

Ms. MACDONALD. I will. Thank you so much.

Senator HARKIN. Mr. Greenstein, welcome back to the committee.

You are no stranger here; every time that we have had in my memory any hearing dealing with food and nutrition or school lunches,

school breakfasts, the WIC program, you have been our expert witness, whether it has been under Republicans or Democrats—again,

another indication that this is truly a bipartisan issue.

I thank you again for being here from the Center on Budget and

Policy Priorities. Thank you for a lifetime of you work examining

and analyzing our food programs of a broad variety, not just school

but WIC, foodstamps, and everything else.

Without objection, your full statement will be made a part of the

record in its entirety, and again, you know the drill here—if you

could summarize and hit the high points, we would sure appreciate

it.

Welcome again.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GREENSTEIN, EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES,

WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Thank you very much, Senator and Mr. Chairman.

My testimony this morning focuses primarily on one issue, and

that is the need to reduce participation in the free and reducedprice school meals by ineligible children in a way that does not

cause eligible children, eligible needy children, to lose benefits.

My written testimony covers one other issue that I will just mention but not go into orally, and that is the importance of maintaining in the WIC program the competitive bidding requirement for

the purchase of infant formula. This was initiated under President

Reagan. It has been one of the most effective cost containment

mechanisms in any health-related program. Without it, Congress

would either have to appropriate $1.5 billion more in WIC each

year to serve the same number of women and children or remove

25

25 percent of the people on the program from it. It is very important to maintain that.

One of the most difficult issues you will face in the reauthorization this year involves this question of whether there is ineligible

participation in the free and reduced-price meal program and if so,

what to do about it. There are three questions that stand out: What

do we know about the nature of the problem? What have been the

results of efforts tried or tested in the past to reduce the participation who may be eligible, and how have those efforts affected eligible children? Third, what do we do?

One possible response is to expand the verification of free and reduced-price meal applications. Currently, school districts are required to take a sample of 3 percent of the approved free and reduced-price applications, send parents a notice to verify the income

reported, and if there is no response, to terminate the children.

We have information on verification from three sources—nationally representative demonstration projects conducted in the

eighties, current pilots that USDA is running, and data on the verification procedures now in use in the program.

Unfortunately, the one most striking finding that emerges is that

attempts to use verification have run into a major problem. Large

percentages of the families sent notices to provide pay stubs to document their income have not responded, and the children in the

families have been terminated.

Specifically, one of every three children selected for verification

under the existing system and the current pilot project is terminated due to non-response. What makes those figures really disturbing is the data suggest that a very large share of the children

who are terminated due to non-response are actually eligible. This

was a major focus of the demonstration projects of the eighties and

of a separate, major study of the verification process. In the study,

81 percent of the children who did not respond and were terminated were found to be eligible for either free or reduced-price

meal. In the pilots, 86 percent of those who were terminated because they did not respond were found to be eligible.

Now, these data are from the eighties. There are not currently

more recent data, but the system has not really changed that much

since then, and while the percentage of those terminated for nonresponse who are actually eligible may be somewhat lower today,

it almost certainly is still very high.

This raises serious concern about proposals to substantially expand verification until we learn how to change the verification

process to bring non-response rates among eligible families down.

In fact it was as a result of the very findings that I have just cited

that the Reagan Administration rejected options in the 1980’s for

widescale verification and instead adopted the current system of a

sample of 3 percent of the approved applications being verified.

The studies from the 1980’s found many non-responding parents

when they were followed up with had no recollection of getting a

notice telling them to provide verification; some had limited literacy and did not understand the notice; some were non-Englishspeaking.

We have a very different situation here than in, say, foodstamps

or Medicaid or welfare, where if you apply for a benefit, you end

26

up meeting with a caseworker who sits across the desk and tells

you what is provided—there is really no personal contact here.

There is a notice sent, and in most cases, if there is not a response,

there is no followup phone call. There may also be a stigma issue;

some parents may not want to provide income stubs to their children’s schools.

Let me give you just a couple more figures about what makes

this so difficult to figure out how to proceed. Let us suppose that

Congress were to require that all free and reduced-price meal applications be verified. Let us suppose that the non-response rate,

now one out of every three, or 33 percent, were lowered to 25 percent, and let us suppose that only 40 percent of the non-responders

were really eligible instead of the 80 percent found in the earlier

studies. These are optimistic assumptions that I am making. Under

these optimistic assumptions, more than one million eligible low-income children would lose benefits. Under some less optimistic assumptions, 2 million would.

Compounding the problem is that eligibility for areas to participate in the summer food program, for poor schools to get more

ample reimbursements in the school breakfast program, and for

part of the reimbursement structure in the child care food program

are all tied to the percentages of meals that are served free or at

reduced price, which means that if we ended up instituting a system that lost lots of eligible kids, we would end up disqualifying,

for example, lots of summer feeding sites from being allowed to

continue in the summer feeding program.

We badly need, I believe, a new round of rigorous demonstration

projects to get to the goal that everybody on a bipartisan basis

wants to get to. To the degree that there are ineligible kids in the

program, we want to address it, but we want to do it without deterring the eligible kids.

Now, what is the extent of the problem? Unfortunately, we do

not know that much about this. When we hear what the error rate

is in foodstamps or welfare or whatever, that comes from the

States taking a sample of the participants and doing an extensive

audit, and they determine an error rate. There are no comparable

data available now on the school lunch program.

The Food and Nutrition Service at USDA, facing these data limitations, has tried to do some other comparisons. They did one comparison using Census data that has now made its way into the

media but is highly problematic. In this, FNS compared the number of children certified for free school meals in the 1998–1999

school year, those certified by October 31, 1998, to the number of

children with incomes below the income limits for the free meals

in calendar year 1999.

When they conducted this comparison, they found significantly

more kids certified for free meals than were below the free meal

income limit in the following calendar year, but there are two problems here. The first is that when FNS also did the same comparison but instead of looking just at free meal certifications and kids

below the free meal income limit, they looked at free and reduced

certifications combined, compared to kids below either the free or

the reduced-income limit. There, the numbers closely matched.

27

The second problem is more fundamental, and that is there is an

inherent problem with comparing the number of kids certified for

free and reduced-price meals in the fall of 1998 to incomes for calendar year 1999. Unemployment fell in 1999. We know that poverty dropped significantly. More important, eligibility for this program is based on monthly income, not annual income.

Now, Senators may recall that several years ago, we had this

issue in the WIC program. FNS used the same set of Census data,

and it seemed to show that the number of infants in WIC exceeded

100 percent of the number eligible. FNS was concerned that there

were problems with this kind of a comparison, so it commissioned

the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences

to get experts to look into this, and the National Research Council

reported in 2001 that using Census data on annual incomes to estimate the number of people eligible for WIC underestimated the eligible pool. The National Research Council developed a more accurate estimate, and when it did, the number of infants in the program fell below the number eligible. No longer was there any discrepancy.

The same issues apply to school lunch in that it has the same

rules for measuring income as WIC. It is monthly income, not annual income. In the past week, data have become available from

the Census Survey that uses monthly income to compare the number of kids eligible for the meals in the very months in which the

certifications are done, and much of the overage disappears when

that is done.

The bottom line is we do not have good data on the proportion

of meal approvals that are erroneous. We know enough to know

there is a significant issue here. It also is probably much less than

these figures that are sometimes cited in the media based on the

apples and oranges comparison of 2 months in the fall of 1 year to

the next calendar year.

Adding to the complexity of this problem is the fact that there

are really two types of so-called errors here. One kind, which we

really do need to be concerned about, is where the parent

misreports the income or the school mishandles the application.

The other kind of error is where the parent reported the income accurately, the school dealt with it accurately, the student was certified accurately in August/September, the beginning of the school

year, and during the course of the year, the parents were able to

increase their earnings. Their income subsequently during the year

may have moved from the free meal range to the reduced-price

meal range. Technically, that is an error; that is part of the error

rate.

Most other major means-tested benefit programs are now moving

to make children eligible for a 12-month period. The reason for this

is most of the programs that have welfare office bureaucracies have

found that you just cannot track the incomes of the low-income

population from month to month. A lot of these people have lowwage jobs that do not have paid sick leave, so their hours of paid

work fluctuate. The employer may want a different number of

hours of work from them at different times. Child care arrangements can vary and can affect work hours.

28

In the Medicaid program and the SCHIP program, States increasingly certify children based on their income at the time of application, and they are then eligible for 12 months, and at the end

of the year, you check again.

In foodstamps, this committee last year moved essentially to do

the same thing for a 6-month period. The States can now determine your income for foodstamps, and your benefit is fixed for 6

months.

Effectively, that is how the school lunch program works, too, but

technically, in the Code of Federal Regulations, there is a regulation that says you are supposed to change the eligibility every

month, whenever the incomes rise or fall above the limits. I asked

the Agriculture Department a couple of weeks ago, Have you ever

enforced that rule in the history of the program? They said, No, we

cannot enforce it; schools cannot administer it. If the welfare agencies cannot do it in foodstamps and Medicaid, the schools cannot

do it. That is another part of the error rate.

What do we do? Let me finish quickly. The policy goal is that we

want the certifications to be as accurate as possible at the start of

the school year without losing eligible, needy children, and once

children are certified, they should be good for the year.

Now, how to achieve that goal? The problem is that no one—not

myself, not the Agriculture Department, not the schools at this

point—no one really knows exactly what is the right mix of procedures to get ineligible kids out without losing lots of eligible kids.

As I have noted, the things done in the past have lost lots of eligible kids.

That is why we really need some major demonstration projects,

which I believe will identify how to do that, and then we can institute that.

Having said that there are four things we can do now. No. 1,

schools currently may directly certify for free meals children getting foodstamps or TANF cash assistance. That makes sense.

TANF and foodstamps do pretty intensive verification. USDA studies have found extremely low error rates among the kids who are

directly certified, but not everyplace does it. It would make sense

to require direct certification be used everywhere except where it

is administratively infeasible for schools to do. The President’s

budget includes that recommendation, and it is a very sound recommendation. In addition, it would make sense to give States the

option to use direct certification from Medicaid and SCHIP in those

States where the Medicaid or the SCHIP income limits are comparable to the free and reduced-price school meal income limits.

Medicaid does verification. Let us piggyback on what other agencies already do. We know those kids’ incomes from the verification,

and if we go that route, we can reduce error rates without deterring eligible children.

No. 2, I would recommend—and the School Food Service Association has a well-intensifying the verification of applications where

the incomes are modestly below the income limits. There is a GAO

study from the 1980’s that found that when you target verification

on the applications just below the income limits, you get more bang

for the buck, and you find larger numbers of ineligibles, for reasons

such as some families apparently mistakenly multiply their weekly

29

wages by 4 to get monthly income, and you really should multiply

by 4.3. If you verify and multiply by 4.3, they move from the free

to the reduced category.

Third, we badly need to reform the verification procedures to reduce non-response rates among eligible families. My testimony has

some specific suggestions. Do we know for sure that these things

will work? No. We need to try them, we need to test them.

Finally, children who are certified should remain eligible for the

school year.

I will just close by saying that the principle that underlies all of

this is the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. No one would want to

see efforts to reduce erroneous certifications result in large numbers of needy eligible children losing benefits with adverse consequences for their nutrition, their health, and their educational attainment.

Thank you.

[Theprepared statement of Mr. Greenstein can be found in the

appendix on page 66.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Greenstein. You have

offered some very interesting observations, and we appreciate your

thoughtful contribution to the hearing that we are having today. I

have appreciated your advice and counsel over the years as we

have gone through various appropriations bills and authorization

efforts in this Agriculture Committee, too.

Let me ask you how you would configure a demonstration

project. You have talked about that we need massive demonstration projects—or some adjective——

Mr. GREENSTEIN. I would not say ‘‘massive,’’ no.

The CHAIRMAN. What was it? It was a lot.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Significant.

The CHAIRMAN. Significant.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Rigorous, carefully evaluated.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. How much would they cost? I wonder how

big you are talking about, and what kind of demonstration project

would you construct to try to find a better way of handling the certification issue?

Mr. GREENSTEIN. They do not necessarily need to be that big.

What they really need to be is nationally representative. The current pilots that FNS is running in this area are not nationally representative. For example, the pilot where they are testing expanded

verification does not have a single school in a major-size city in it.

The reason for that is that those pilots were limited to volunteer

schools. You do have an issue where, if you are testing improved

methods of verification and you do find some ineligible kids and

you do weed them out, the school gets less funding, and therefore,

some schools may not want to volunteer to be in the pilot.

What you have to do is—and this is not really a cost; this means

you lose a savings in the pilot—you have to work out a system that

holds the schools harmless from losing money during the demonstration. If you say to schools, ‘‘Coming into the demonstration

means you are going to lose Federal money,’’ not surprisingly, we

are not going to get a good cross-section of schools.

The main cost of the demo tends to be for the evaluation contractor. Now, I do not know exactly what such a set of demos would

30

cost. Is it $2 or $3 million, is it $7 or $8 or $9 or $10 million, over

a few years—I do not know. I suspect it is in that range.

Let me say, Mr. Chairman, that the series of things that I have

proposed here, I view—and if they are not, they could be made to

be—as in the short run being roughly neutral in cost. From these

demos, there ought to emerge treatments that, once instituted,

could yield some not insignificant savings from reducing ineligible

participation that you could plow back into the child nutrition programs.

The difficulty is that at the present time, we do not know how

to do the things that would get the sizable savings on reducing ineligible participation without losing lots of eligible kids. In fact,

some of the proposals that one could look at now, you could get a

big savings figure for it, and the majority of the savings would be

losing eligible kids.

What I am trying to propose here are some things that get us

in a process through some immediate improvements and some

demonstrations that lead policymakers to have the information

they need to then take a second set of more substantial steps.

The CHAIRMAN. One thing you mentioned in your suggestion list

was schools contacting parents who turn in questionable information about income or whatever, or those who do not respond, to

have them call——

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes, a phone call.

The CHAIRMAN. Who is going to do this? The teachers have to do

these applications; the administrators are busy doing other things.

I wonder how we are going to impose new requirements on schools

without figuring out what the implications are as a practical matter for them.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. That is an excellent question. There is no way

to take further steps with regard to the over-certification issue, as

it is sometimes labeled, without some additional administrative

cost. My sense—and this is the way the Department is thinking as

well—is that one would put some increment into the free and reduced-price meal at free and reduced-price meal reimbursement to

cover the additional cost.

There are two additional costs. One is if you verify even modestly

more applications than the current 3 percent, you have some administrative costs from doing more applications. If you improve the

verification process, the same is true.

I was recently told that there was a meeting that I am not sure

if it was the Congressional Research Service or Congressional staff

had on this issue a few months ago where, interestingly enough,

one of the participants was an individual from Virginia whom a

Virginia school district contracted with to handle the verification of

the school meals for them. Under this contract, the contractor did

make a phone call to each family that did not submit verification

when requested to do so. He reported to Congressional staff and

CRS that when they made this phone call, they substantially reduced the non-response rate. It did mean the contract cost a little

more because they made these phone calls. It seems to me that if

we are looking at a larger process, and we think that the larger

process overall will produce ultimately some net savings—even if

it produced no savings, I would argue if it were deficit-neutral, getVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:47 Aug 12, 2003 Jkt 088720 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 88720.TXT1 SAG1 PsN: SAG1
31

ting it right would be worth doing—but over time, there ought to

be net savings from a more accurate process where we weed out

more of the ineligibles but we do it in a way that we do not lose

so many of the eligibles.

A way to think about it is that some of those savings go back into

the costs for a better verification process.

Having said that, this is another reason we need the demonstration projects, because no one wants to move forward with something that adds cost in the area. I should have said we need to find

the most cost-effective, cost-efficient ways to reduce ineligible participation without losing eligible children.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator Harkin.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Again, thanks, Mr. Greenstein, for the insights that you provide

to us. On the four recommendations that you made, I am wondering—there is no recommendation here or really any observation by

you on the prospect of a two-tier system. The American School

Food Service Association testified that in the WIC program, anyone

with incomes under 185 percent of poverty level is automatically in

the WIC program without charge. They say the same income guidelines should be extended to the school nutrition programs. They

point out that—and I am reading from Ms. MacDonald’s testimony—‘‘The reduced-price category is by far the smallest of the

current school meal categories. Less than 10 percent of the meals

served are served to children in the reduced-price category.’’ She

goes on to say, ‘‘The reduced-price copay should be eliminated, and

meals should be available at no cost to all children with family incomes up to 185 percent of poverty.’’

Wouldn’t that take care of all these demonstration programs and

things that we are trying to figure on? You are talking about less

than 10 percent.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. While we do not have good, precise data, there

is reason to believe that a significant portion of the over-certification rate or over-rate—whatever term you want to use—consists

of children who are eligible for reduced-price meals getting free

meals, in many cases because the income rises a little over the

year.

Doing a single tier in my view would substantially reduce the

error rate. I did not include it in my testimony for the reason that,

as you know, our Center does a lot of work on budget issues and

follows the budget process closely, and everything I am hearing indicates to me that this year’s budget resolution will not provide any

new money for child nutrition. In the absence of money, we

wouldn’t be able to move to a single-tier system—I do not know the

price tag on that, but it would be a not insignificant budgetary

cost—and presumably, if the committee did not get money allocated

to it in the budget resolution to do that, it would not be able to proceed. That was the reason I did not include that here.

I also wanted to quickly note, because I realized I did not fully

answer, to Chairman Cochran, I certainly do not envision teachers

having to do that extra work. One of the things that warrants some

consideration, actually, is whether this whole verification process

should be moved up to the school district level, the administrative

32

offices at the school district, in which case they could either do it

directly or perhaps contract it out. I certainly do not want to burden the school food service personnel or the teachers with doing

this. I agree that that would not be wise to do.

Senator HARKIN. Somebody has to do it, and therefore, you have

to pay someone someplace to do this.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes, yes.

Senator HARKIN. That is another cost. I would have to take a

look at that to see what the cost-benefit ratio of something like that

might be. I mean, what are we chasing here? How much savings

are we chasing? That is the question I have in my mind.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes. We really do not know. That is the problem.

Senator HARKIN. We do not know that.

The other question I have—and we have asked CBO for this, and

we cannot seem to get an answer, and I thought maybe your Center might have some answers—is do they have any anticipated cost

of what it would be to go to a two-tier system? We cannot seem to

get estimates on it.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Oh, that is an easy estimate for CBO to do.

Senator HARKIN. Well, how come I cannot get it from them? Do

you have it? Do you know it?

Mr. GREENSTEIN. I do not have it. One can do a mechanical calculation where you simply take all of the current reduce-price

meals, and you multiply them by the difference between the free

meal rate and the reduced-price rate. The cost is probably somewhat more than that to the degree that if the meals were free, between 130 and 185 percent more of the children would participate.

What I do not know—and this is CBO’s job—they will make an estimate of what the change in the participation rate will be, and

that will be part of their cost estimate.

I presume that if you have not gotten an answer, it is probably

because this time of the year, CBO focuses on doing its reestimate

of the President’s budget, which comes out later this week, and

then the budget committees give them a huge amount of stuff to

do as they move toward budget resolution markup, and often, other

requests get backed up.

There is no question CBO can answer your question. I guess they

just have not gotten to it yet.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Miller.

Senator MILLER. I do not have any questions, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Greenstein. It is a

pleasure to see you and have the benefit of your testimony at our

hearing.

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Our final panel is invited to come and take your

places at the witness table.

We welcome Ms. Susan Borra, who is immediate past president

of the American Dietetic Association here in Washington; Mr. Robert Kemmery, Jr., Executive Director of Student Support Services

of Baltimore County Public Schools in Towson, Maryland; Ms.

Melanie Payne, a child nutrition director from Opelika, Alabama;

Mr. Jerry Kozak, who is President and Chief Executive Officer of

33

the National Milk Producers Federation, from Arlington, Virginia,

and he is appearing on behalf of the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association; and Mr.

Dennis Heiman, who is principal of Muscatine High School in

Muscatine, Iowa.

Thank you all for being here. We have copies of the statements

that you have provided us which we appreciate very much, and we

would ask you to make whatever summary comments from those

prepared texts that you would like.

We will start off with Ms. Borra.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN T. BORRA, IMMEDIATE PAST

PRESIDENT, AMERICAN DIETETIC ASSOCIATION,

WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. BORRA. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. I really thank you for the opportunity to discuss the

role that school nutrition programs can play in children’s health.

My name is Susan Borra, and I am a registered dietician and immediate past president of the American Dietetic Association. I am

here today delighted to represent my fellow members of the American Dietetic Association, ADA, 67,000 of us, and we are food and

nutrition professionals across the Nation.

ADA is the largest organization of its kind, and we guide our

work by the philosophy that we base our work on sound science

and evidence-based practice in everything that we do.

One in six of our members is employed in the public health setting, including school food service representatives here today, and

they bring unique training and skills that integrate nutrition and

safe food-handling programs into these public programs.

This morning, I have been asked to do a little stage-setting for

you to discuss the issue of childhood overweight, which is certainly

an important issue that has been identified here, and it is growing

in prevalence.

The problem of childhood overweight is influenced by a huge variety of factors. Therefore, when we start to look at solutions, we

are really going to have to look at both environmental and individual approaches.

Prevention of the problem we will all say is key, and school food

and nutrition education programs can really play an important role

in positively impacting the health of children.

The American Dietetic Association has focused our attention on

the issue of overweight and obesity, particularly on the subject of

healthy weights for our children. As Senator Harkin mentioned,

you have heard some of the statistics that are out there. It is at

an all-time high in childhood overweight. The rates of tripled in

school-age children since 1970. Sixty percent of overweight children

have at least one adverse cardiovascular disease risk factor. Research shows that overweight children frequently become overweight adults. Looking at our entire Nation, we are spending more

than $100 billion in direct and indirect costs annually to treat obesity and associated chronic diseases in both adults and children,

and these costs are indeed rising.

Overweight and obesity is a chronic disease that occurs simply

when people consume more calories than they expend. However,

34

many factors—genetic factors, physiological factors, psychological

factors, metabolic factors, and certainly the environmental influences—contribute to the imbalance of caloric consumption and energy expenditure. These facts are affecting when, where, and what

we eat. These factors are also affecting the decline in physical activity and the increase in sedentary behaviors.

Children of all ages are spending more free time in sedentary activities both at home and in school. The dietary intake of children

is currently not meeting Federal nutrition guidelines. For example,

fewer than 15 percent of school children eat the recommended

servings of fruit, and only 30 percent consume the recommended

milk group servings.

The fact that more than half the children in the United States

eat breakfast, lunch, or a snack at school demonstrates the degree

to which schools can support the development of lifelong balanced

nutritional habits. In addition, as has been mentioned, while it is

beyond the scope of the discussions today, schools also need to provide many more opportunities for physical activity for our children.

Because of the complexity of this problem, prevention of childhood overweight will require a multifaceted approach. Prevention

in childhood could reduce the incidence of chronic diseases such as

diabetes and cardiovascular disease. ADA has invested in numerous projects, many in partnership with other organizations and

groups, public and private, to understand more about childhood

overweight.

In qualitative consumer research, we found that people do not

seem to connect the relationship between overweight and chronic

disease. We found that children and adolescents are focusing on

subjects like appearance, not necessarily their health. Their concerns about weight generally arise as a result of failed athletic performance, as in the case of boys, or dissatisfaction with their appearance, as in the case of girls. When children and adolescents are

asked about what they try to do to change their eating behavior to

lose weight, what they tell you is, ‘‘Well, I will skip a meal,’’ rather

than modify their eating behaviors in a more healthful way.

Our consumer research also shows that parents generally do not

recognize the potential long-term health problems for overweight

children. Parents hesitate to take action regarding their children’s

weight because they really believe their children will outgrow these

problems, and they fear that their interventions may cause

unhealthy eating disorders such as anorexia.

Teachers consider it essential that parents support healthy lifestyles at home. However, they see little continuity between lessons

on healthy living at school and lifestyle outside their classrooms.

Clearly, children, parents, and teachers need resources to deal

with the issues of healthy weight. ADA urges comprehensive strategies for reducing the number of overweight children with particular emphasis on family and community-based interventions that

promote healthful eating practices and daily physical activity.

School nutrition programs do offer a unique opportunity to positively impact the health of our Nation’s children, and that is why

the American Dietetic Association is committed to strengthen Federal nutrition programs. In the Child Nutrition Reauthorization

Act, we will focus our attention certainly on enhancing nutrition

35

education, looking at improving environments conducive to healthy

food and beverage choices. We want to help in developing a comprehensive, behavior-based research agenda so we really know

what we are doing. ADA believes that appropriately trained individuals such as my colleagues in ASFSA and ADA should be in decisionmaking roles that can transform these programs in ways to

help students succeed in making food and beverage choices that

will really contribute to a healthy eating pattern.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to lay the groundwork on

thoughts toward making the school nutrition programs an important resource in our national strategy focused on promoting optimal

health and preventing overweight in our Nation’s children.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Borra, for your interesting testimony.

Mr. Kemmery.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Borra can be found in the appendix on page 77.]

STATEMENT OF ROBERT J. KEMMERY, JR., EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR, STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES, BALTIMORE

COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, TOWSON, MARYLAND

Mr. KEMMERY. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and

members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to give

testimony regarding the school lunch and school breakfast programs.

I am Robert Kemmery, Executive Director of Student Support

Services for the Baltimore County Public Schools. The Baltimore

County Public Schools is the 23rd largest school system in the

United States, serving 108,600 students.

From 1991 through 2002, I was principal of Eastern Technical

High School in Baltimore County. My 32 years as a public school

educator have shaped the statement I will share with the committee. I would like to leave the members of the committee with three

key thoughts.

First of all, the Baltimore County Public Schools are an excellent

representative of the challenges educators face—an enormous demand for quality education with limited resources.

Second, with our No Child Left Behind Federal legislation and

the expectation of a quality education for all students and high performance for all students, schools must form partnerships with

businesses and their communities to achieve this laudable goal.

Third, partnerships with beverage companies are a win-win situation for education and business if managed appropriately. Keep

them a local decision by educators in consultation with their school

community.

If I can take you back 12 years when I was first appointed principal of Eastern Technical High School, I faced a situation that

many principals faced across the United States. I went into a very

economically challenged school community with a school that was

sanctioned by the State in terms of not meeting the requirements

of the Maryland State Department of Education High School Performance Report Card. Many of the areas that were requirements

for graduation were at the ‘‘unsatisfactory’’ level.

36

Being a new principal, one of the first things I needed to do was

to get people to recognize that we did have some difficulty. When

I turned to the Essex-Middle River-White Marsh Chamber of Commerce, they listened to our plea. They got involved with the

schools. They helped us set up focus groups across the county to

determine what is the purpose of a high school education, how can

we work together to see that all of our students achieve at high levels. They were truly the catalyst that helped us reinvent a school.

This school, being at the bottom performance level in 1991, became a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence and a United States Department of Education New American High School in 1997 and

1999 with visits from the U.S. Secretary of Education and educators and business leaders from 45 States and 25 countries around

the world.

If it were not for these business partnerships, this would not

have happened.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals and the

Carnegie Foundation released a major report in 1996 called

‘‘Breaking Ranks: A Systemic School Model for School Reform

Across the United States.’’ If you look at the major guidelines of

this systemic school reform model, partnerships are at the heart of

it—how do you build relationships to advantage students and a

community?

This school, through reaching out to partnerships, has a Lockheed Martin Applied Physics Lab, a Verizon Telecommunications

Showcase and Distance Learning Lab, a Comcast Communications

Center. There are over 100 corporations and business that work

with this school to raise the opportunity and the future promise for

each and every student in that school.

Two years ago, I served as president of the Maryland Association

of Secondary School Principals. In Annapolis, a bill was entered

called Senate Bill 453, the Captive Audience/Stop Commercialism

in Schools Act. This particular bill mobilized educators from across

the State of Maryland, and they went to Annapolis and said:

Please, let this be a local decision. Let our school communities

work together with educators to determine what type of relationships should work between business and schools.

A lot of attention works around vending machines and business

partnerships. In my estimation, the best way to foster these partnerships is to let the decision be made by those school districts and

educators and partners. That allows choice; it allows choice for beverages like water, juice, sports drinks, soda and diet soda.

Maryland already had a mandate on the books. If you are a

school in Maryland, you cannot operate any vending machines until

the last period of the lunch day. At my high school, that meant

that at 1:30 in the afternoon, the machines were turned on. They

were on electric monitors. That when school let out at 2:15, if a student wanted to purchase a beverage, they could.

The other part of this is that schools are their community lifeline. There were over 600 adults a year who were getting skills upgrade training courses at the school. When you factor in 45 interscholastic sports, drama productions, all the community meetings

held, people running from one job to training programs, it was

critically important to have these machines available.

37

There is also a financial benefit to schools that derives from

these machines, and I can tell you in the 11 years that I was principal at Eastern Technical High School, we derived $30,000 a year

in profit from these machines.

What did we do with the profit? We worked with our school community representatives, and we hosted 45 interscholastic sports

teams. We also had drama productions. I remember purchasing

shoes for students who were in need, students who could not afford

to go on field trips. That is the only pot of money that principals

have across this country—and I am talking about secondary principals—that is discretionary, how you can help people go forward.

We did not compete with the school lunch program. We made possible educational opportunities. We were really supporting the

physical education activities, because when 55 percent of your

1,375 students are playing interscholastic sports, that is the kind

of activity balance and moderation—you need to have healthy

young people.

I would ask you to please keep this a local decision. The power

of partnerships is the power to reach out to one another and do

what is best for our students.

In my remarks which you have, I also share with you a copy of

a 16-page color brochure on Eastern Technical High School. If you

look at the second page, you will see former U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. Riley, who visited the school; our state superintendent,

Dr. Nancy Grasmick; our former Governor Parris Glendening. This

school became an economic catalyst for revitalizing older neighborhoods throughout the State, and we cannot afford to have any kind

of limitations on that power to hold hands together with partners,

whether business, whether higher education, whether community

agencies, to serve our most valuable resource—our students.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Kemmery.

Ms. Payne.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kemmery can be found in the

appendix on page 88.]

STATEMENT OF MELANIE PAYNE, CHILD NUTRITION

DIRECTOR, OPELIKA CITY SCHOOLS, OPELIKA, ALABAMA

Ms. PAYNE. Thank you for inviting me.

I was asked to come and share a little bit about what our school

system is doing in Alabama.

Opelika, Alabama is a small city of about 24,000 people. Opelika

City Schools has an enrollment of 4,500 students with approximately 63 percent free and reduced. Our area is predominantly

blue-collar industrial but located 7 miles from the educational community of Auburn University.

Our school system is operated along business principles much

like a corporation. It has long been our policy to use our funding

wisely to educate every child without parents being constantly

asked for donations or funding. We have never allowed vending

machines in our schools.

Our city supports our schools financially with an extra annual allocation of $1.7 million. We committed some of those funds to our

schools to eliminate fundraising by students.

38

Our child nutrition program is not-for-profit but self-supporting.

We have a closed campus policy, and our program is not competing

with school stores or school vending machines. Therefore, we expect

nutrition to be the focus without snack food sales to balance the

budget. Participation is 90 percent systemwide for lunch and 33

percent for breakfast. Our program is financially sound.

When USDA offered the option in the early 1990’s to serve meals

based on nutritional standards for students rather than food

groups, our child nutrition program adopted NuMenus. We turned

off our fryers and purchased steamers. We did intensive training

for our cooks to help them learn to cook with spices instead of the

traditional Southern ham and bacon seasoning. We served more

fresh fruits, but our fresh vegetables were limited to salad bar-type

items because of the time involved in preparation.

Two years ago, we discovered the New North Florida Farmers

Cooperative. The coop carries liability insurance and requires their

members to take classes on use of pesticides. Working through the

coop gives us a level of quality assurance that we would not have

buying from a farmer off the street.

They pre-process fresh collards, peas, butter beans and sweet potato sticks in season. We now offer this variety of fresh vegetables

among our other offerings one or two times a month. We hope to

continue to expand these offering as more small farmers join the

coop.

Our appeal to parents is that we offer their children two nutritious meals each day with numerous choices. If they will encourage

their children to eat at school and eat a variety of what we offer,

they can feel less pressured when their evening meal is a higherfat choice. We still serve pizza and hamburgers several times per

month. We do not serve any one food every day. Students can buy

any regular item on the line a la carte. Ice cream and a noncarbonated sports drink are the only special a la carte items we ever offer.

We have justified the ice cream choice as a means to get students

to consume more calcium, because so many do not drink milk.

The Child Nutrition Program in Opelika has the support of the

administration, the faculty, and the parents. We do not have to

compete with anyone for the food dollars.

Convincing the adults in schools can be just as difficult as convincing the children. The tremendous rise in Type 2 diabetes

among children is staggering. Schools cannot fix all problems, but

they do hold their share of blame on this issue when students have

high-fat, high-sugar foods available all through the day.

Schools are contributing to the obesity issue. Schools provide students more of their meals and snacks during the school year than

they get at home. The school environment as a whole must be accountable for what they feed children. Opelika City Schools recognized our responsibility about 10 years ago and began the movement to get where we are today.

Child feeding programs are part of the problem, but have the

least control to fix them. Most of my colleagues would prefer to feed

children healthy choices. Economics has made this virtually impossible. Many kitchens were designed with fried foods as the focal

point and do not have the equipment to steam fresh vegetables.

Many students have never been exposed to a fresh, cooked vegetaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:47 Aug 12, 2003 Jkt 088720 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 88720.TXT1 SAG1 PsN: SAG1
39

ble. They only know fried. Change will have to be made with a

sound plan and will take a great deal of work from all areas of education. It will require commitment and creativity. Most important,

it has not been an easy transition for us and will not be easy for

anyone else.

Many schools rely heavily on vending to pay for everything from

supplies to club activities. Removing vending and high-fat snack

foods from cafeterias while allowing school stores to continue to sell

those products will bankrupt most child feeding programs.

Opelika City School system approaches every area of education

with the child’s well-being first. Our child feeding program teaches

nutrition by example and is the child nutrition program. We do not

believe that offering students pizza and fries every day for lunch

supports the nutrition education information being taught in the

classroom.

Our goal is to always support education. Approaching child feeding from a child nutrition perspective requires rethinking most

longheld beliefs about what children will and will not eat and requires us to be the adult when it comes to balancing what is popular versus what is nutritious. That works in Opelika, Alabama.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Ms. Payne, for your interesting testimony.

Mr. Kozak, please proceed.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Payne can be found in the appendix on page 92.]

STATEMENT OF JERRY KOZAK, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL MILK PRODUCERS

FEDERATION, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, ON BEHALF OF THE

NATIONAL MILK PRODUCERS FEDERATION AND THE

INTERNATIONAL DAIRY FOODS ASSOCIATION

Mr. KOZAK. Mr. Chairman, I am Jerry Kozak, president and

CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation. Today I am testifying on behalf of both National Milk, which represents producers,

and the International Dairy Foods Association, which represents

processors. Greg Frazier, senior vice president of IDFA, is in the

audience with me.

Our unity on this issue reflects the critical importance of child

nutrition programs for the dairy industry.

I want to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all the

people in this room, especially the American School Food Service

Association. I have been married to an elementary teacher for 30

years, and if I did not get that in, I would be in big trouble when

I got home.

Let me discuss the programs and the national commitment to

offer our young people healthful choices and a fair start toward lifelong good nutrition. Milk is an essential part of that commitment.

The child nutrition programs have strong public support for several reasons. Fundamentally, almost all of us would agree that

they are the right thing for society to do. We recognize a responsibility to give children a fair start in life, nutritionally and otherwise. The programs have an excellent track record, as all members

of this committee know, and child nutrition programs encourage

40

our children to develop good dietary habits not just at lunch but

throughout the day and throughout life.

Unfortunately, budgets for these programs have not kept up with

inflation over the years, and we believe additional budgetary resources are necessary. Funding constraints can create a vicious

cycle, discouraging innovation and improvements in food quality

and service. In turn, that may drive children away from these programs.

We know that participation in school meal programs has been

stagnant or declining. Meanwhile, the programs face stiff competition. This competition might be the fast food restaurant down the

road or the vending machine down the hall. I am not condemning

either one, but the studies do show that the children who participate in school meal programs are better-nourished than those who

do not. Like most of you, we believe that children learn better

when they eat right, so it is in our interest to have more children

participating.

Milk has always been central to the child nutrition programs,

right from the beginning in 1946, when the School Lunch Program

was initiated. Milk is a marker for a healthy diet. It is the best answer to our children’s chronic calcium deficiencies. More than twothirds of teenage boys and nearly 90 percent of teenage girls do not

get the recommended amounts.

Milk is much more than calcium. It is also an important source

of phosphorous, potassium, and many other nutrients. We are

learning more about milk’s benefits all the time. There is emerging

evidence that milk is also an important solution to our Nation’s

obesity crisis. Several studies show that dairy consumption is inversely related to obesity and may help reduce the risk of Type 2

diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Yet trends in school milk consumption have not been encouraging. Our industry needs to do a better job of making milk attractive

to children. Last year, the National Dairy Council and the American School Food Service Association sponsored a pilot test in 140

schools involving 100,000 students. The idea was to see whether

children would drink more if they had a better product. That

meant additional flavors like strawberry, attractive plastic packaging, keeping milk cold in new and better coolers, and offering milk

through a la carte and vending sales.

The test was a tremendous success. Children in fact did drink

more milk. Sales were up 15 percent in elementary schools and 22

percent in secondary schools. There was more. Participation in the

school meal programs went up also by nearly 5 percent in secondary schools. That is important because it means that more children

will get the benefits not just of milk but other healthy foods in the

lunch program.

If we could improve milk in the same way nationwide, participation in the school meal program could grow by nearly half a million

children. More than 2 million children who already eat in the cafeteria but do not drink milk would become milk drinkers. Potentially, these 2.6 million children would reap lifelong health benefits. Their health care costs would decline as much as $1 billion a

year.

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Mr. Chairman, the entire dairy industry, both producers and

processors, believes that Congress should use these and other successful models to improve child nutrition programs. First, Congress

should promote more consumption of milk in schools by providing

incentives to schools that upgrade the quality of milk. Schools

should be able to do this by adopting improved standards of the

type that I described as well as finding other ways to increase consumption.

Second, Congress should provide more opportunities for commercially branded milk in more sales venues throughout the school.

Placing these products alongside milk in the school lunch line is

one example.

Third, Congress should reject a tax on milk’s role in the child nutrition programs. The statutory requirement to offer milk in our

schools is fundamental and should remain in place.

Finally, Congress should assure that schools that want to may

offer milk any time, anywhere on the school premises and at any

school event, regardless of any other contractual arrangements.

These four items are priorities of the National Milk Producers

Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association. We developed them together. We would like to work with this committee

to achieve those.

We are proud of our industry and the nutritious products that we

make and sell. We support you in trying to give all of our Nation’s

children a fair start—an opportunity to make healthy choices. The

work you are doing on this committee is vital to our children’s wellbeing, and we would like to help you in any way we can.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Kozak, for your testimony.

Mr. Heiman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kozak can be found in the appendix on page 95.]

STATEMENT OF DENNIS J. HEIMAN, PRINCIPAL, MUSCATINE

HIGH SCHOOL, MUSCATINE, IOWA

Mr. HEIMAN. Thank you.

First, I am honored to be the only active principal here. It is

quite a thrill.

As I enter the building by 7 a.m., I say hello to the head cook

and the head custodian, and therefore I know that everything is

going well. If I am not there, they wonder what is wrong.

We are at the secondary level, a high school of about 2,000 students, and our cafeteria manager sent along a Valentine’s Day card

from the kids in the building. She received about 30 of these, and

I know the elementary cooks received quite a few as well. This is

for the fruit and vegetable program, and it says ‘‘Thank you tremendously.’’ As you establish priorities and funding, I understand this committee has a difficult task; but as a high school principal, I also understand the difference between my making a recommendation and

you making a decision, so I respect you for that.

With all said, feed the children. You have brought in numerous

nutritional experts, you have heard testimony from cooks, doctors,

and other experts in regard to energy, lifespan, and healthy living.

42

I am here to tell you about the experience and the growth that

Muscatine High School accomplished through this pilot program.

At first, we too looked at solely the nutritional aspects of it, trying to blend the natural sugar high with academics, striving to

have our ITEDs, or Iowa Test of Educational Development, soar so

that we could meet the No Child Left Behind requirements.

When we should feed the child was the question was approached.

After gathering all the data, we simply asked our customers—our

students—when should we feed you, and they said when we are

hungry—mid-morning. That made sense to us.

We chose to feed the kids at 10 a.m. during our Channel One

time. Channel One is the equivalent of CNN, or about 16 minutes

of teenage news worldwide.

You have heard of the nutritional value, but I want to speak to

you about the unintended consequences of this program that far

outweigh—unfortunately or fortunately—any of the nutritional

value.

Our student-teacher camaraderie grew. Imagine being in a classroom with one of your teachers and having the teacher explain his

likes and dislikes in fruits and vegetables and why. The teacher is

seen as a more human person. The children understand. I have

heard more friendly conversations with faculty and students than

at any other time in my 30 years of being an educator.

I thought it was interesting 1 day when we had tangerines, and

the teachers said, ‘‘No, these are not small oranges. These are tangerines.’’ The kids had never had things like that before. Explaining the difference between broccoli and cauliflower was interesting.

Probably the No. 1 hit in our school is either the fat-free caramel

apples or the fat-free French dressing with carrots. We do have a

wide range. The student camaraderie has grown tremendously.

On peer acceptance, some of the students who aid in the delivery

of the food have special needs. This provides the children with special needs an avenue never before entered into at the high school.

They received a position of respect. They have been talked to by

students who normally would not talk to children with special

needs. We have regular education students deliver, through severe

and profound, to our behavioral-disordered, and those children

have gained the self-respect that was not known to them before.

On team-building—how to deliver, hand out, and collect the remains of nearly 2,000 pieces of food in 100 locations caused a major

building involvement. Cafeteria workers, teachers, custodians, administration and students—yes, everyone—worked closely together

to solve the problem. Plastic grocery bags were brought in from

home, and teachers brought a towel from home with a spray bottle

to clean up afterward. The kids helped to solve the problem, and

the problem was solved with no expense, which is always nice.

On peer pressure—occasionally, a new food is not well-received.

My personal choice of not-well-received would be the trail mix, but

other kids did not like the banana chips or, unfortunately, the

dried cherries from Michigan—but we tried them. It is a good thing

the Senator left. Sometimes, this unfavorable food was found in the

hallways or in waste cans. I simply made one short announcement:

If the mess continues, the program will cease. If you do not want

the food, trade with someone, save it for later, eat it at a later

43

time. The mess disappeared. Students once again solved the problem.

In large schools such as ours, our children might not even know

people in their own classes. They may know them by their first

name, alone, and ‘‘They are in my physics class.’’ This gave the

children the opportunity to talk, trade food, listen to each other—

‘‘Oh, I have had that before—it is good—I’ll trade.’’ It removed all

the levels of social/economic, ethnic, and academic barriers.

What I just described is now being pushed as character education—understanding, caring for, and working with others to solve

common problems.

In another light, this program may be better than the proposed

tax cuts. The program places money in local control, stimulates

local economy, and eliminates the wide social/economic disparity of

delivery. Everyone at Muscatine High School, from the principal to

the lowest social/economic child in the building, receives the same

benefit at the same time in the same manner.

To outdo the milk person, my wife is a kindergarten teacher, and

I have been married for 32 years, and her building also has a free

and reduced program as well as a fruit and vegetable program. Her

building is over 50 percent free and reduced. If her children did not

have this fruit, they would never experience it. It is crucial for

them. They also receive the same unintended consequences.

I have heard today and I read an article that nearly 25 percent

of people who receive free and reduced lunches do not qualify. If

$100 is keeping children from eating, why? This is America.

As we grew, our parents and grandparents taught us that we

were never really accepted into a home until we were offered food

or beverage. You have made each classroom a warmer, more welcoming educational environment. I would like to thank you.

I came here to speak of food and told you that the program that

you endorse has crossed all aspects of education and has made our

school a better place.

Two other unintended consequences—we have removed the

candy machine; our sales had dropped 48 percent since we brought

in the fruit and vegetable program—and with the help of our Pepsi

dealer, we put in a milk machine. We need more milk because the

biggest problem in the four schools I visited in the State of Iowa

is that we cannot keep supplied with the bottled milk to put in the

milk vending machine.

Thank you for your time, and please continue and expand the

program.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Heiman can be found in the appendix on page 101.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Heiman, for your interesting testimony. I am very impressed with what you have told

us about what you do at your school and the successes you have

had in bringing high-quality nutritional foods to the students. It is

a model that seems to me worth emulating all around the country.

I hope there is some way to disseminate that information so that

other schools can hear of your successes and try to figure out how

they can apply these same techniques in their classrooms and in

their schools.

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I am not just talking to you because you are a principal, although I do have a partial attitude toward school principals. My father was one for his entire career, later as an administrator of the

county system, but most of his career was spent as a high school

or secondary school principal, consolidated school principal. I share

the challenges—I shared them growing up—that you are faced with

getting good workers in the cafeterias and the lunch rooms and getting staff members to do the best possible job they can delivering

these meals in a way that the children will appreciate them and

also profit from them.

One thing that we have some experience with here is providing

authority to the Department of Agriculture to disseminate surplus

commodities or commodities to schools around the country, and I

just wonder what your experience has been with that. I am going

to ask each one of you who is involved in the school programs what

your impression is and any suggestions for improving that distribution program.

Mr. Heiman, I will start with you.

Mr. HEIMAN. I will let someone else start.

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Payne, do you have any thoughts on that?

Ms. PAYNE. I have been in my position for 17 years, and there

has been a great deal of improvement in the delivery of commodities. This year, the fresh produce is fabulous. It is getting to us

on time, and it is getting to us in high quality. We are very glad

to get it.

The CHAIRMAN. That is great.

Let me ask you, Ms. Borra, about the comments you made about

getting children to appreciate the nutritious foods that are made

available. Sometimes it is difficult to get students to eat them,

much less taste some foods that they are not familiar with. Do you

have any thoughts about techniques that can be used by school

food managers or others to encourage students to try new things

and to eat nutritious foods?

Ms. BORRA. Certainly the availability is a big key on that, to

make sure those types of foods are available. I believe research

shows that it could take anywhere from three to ten tries for someone to actually incorporate a food into their lifestyle. It is not just

a one-time shot in most of these cases if you are talking about food

behaviors.

I would like to comment on Mr. Heiman’s program. That is the

best nutrition education I have heard of in terms of actually having

the opportunity to work with the food and be with the teachers in

the classroom. I am sure that in that environment, a lot of foods

were tried that were probably never tried before, so that those

types of opportunities would certainly be helpful.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Ms. Payne, I appreciate the success that you have had at your

school, too. It is heart-warming to hear that story and the progress

made in that district. In addition to providing nutritious foods to

your students, do you offer any education classes or instructional

opportunities for the students as well?

Ms. PAYNE. We did a survey 3 years ago and found that less than

10 percent of our students knew how many grams of fat they

should have a day, how many calories they should have a day at

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the middle school and high school levels. I went back to the school

administrators—I am not an educator; my background is business

and nutrition—so I went back to the school environment and asked

how can we do something about this.

We have added a kindergarten program working with Cooperative Extension Service. They have a program called Nutrition Education Program, and they provide a lot of things that children can

take home, stickers, that type of thing. They could not get to all

of our kindergartners, and in Opelika, if you do something for one

classroom, you do it for every classroom in the system in that grade

level. We had the extension service come in and train our kindergarten teachers. Now, every kindergartner has nutrition for 10

days in the spring. They go to a farm, they eat fresh vegetables and

fruits in the classroom and do lots of other hands-on things with

fruits and vegetables, including planting something.

We now plan when that first group of kindergartners reaches

fifth grade to have a fifth grade program, because that is when the

educators told me that we needed a backup. We use some of our

nutrition education money in child nutrition to pay for supplies for

the teachers, and my secretary runs copies for their worksheets; I

go out and buy the dirt for their planting and take it to them. I

had to justify that to the auditors when they came.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope you did not get into too much trouble.

Ms. PAYNE. No, not too bad—local auditors.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kozak, I was interested to hear your observations about your pilot program to increase consumption and

make the consumption of milk more attractive to students, that different ways of packaging and flavoring can increase consumption.

You talked about that Congress should learn from this and provide

incentives to schools that do this kind of thing. Why can’t the industry do a better job of that itself? Why do you need Congress to

provide incentives?

Mr. KOZAK. It is a good question, Mr. Chairman, and it is one

of those areas that we are working cooperatively as we did in the

school milk pilot test program that was funded by the industry. It

has become apparent with inflation and the low margins that milk

processors have that it is critical to make up some of the additional

money to provide these extra products. There is a commitment on

behalf of our industry, but we think it is also not practical in a

number of school districts where the reimbursement rate is not sufficient.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kemmery, it was interesting to hear about

your success in the Baltimore area schools with the secondary education folks. Are there elementary students at this school, too, or

are you just involved in the secondary?

Mr. KEMMERY. It is grades 9 through 12, Mr. Chairman, 1,375

students. The way our school system is set up, there are 102 elementary schools, 38 middle schools, and 24 high schools in the

school district.

The CHAIRMAN. Do the same kinds of programs exist in the elementary schools as well as the secondary schools, or was this

unique to the secondary school level?

Mr. KEMMERY. Basically, there is a prescribed health and nutrition curriculum that goes throughout the K through 12 program,

46

and at the high school level, the program is a required course for

high school graduation with a number of units in healthy living

and nutrition. That is true of the entire school district.

If you are referring to some of the particular programs at Eastern Tech, it is a magnet high school with a lot of business-industry

partnerships to prepare students to go into engineering, allied

health careers, computer-assisted drafting and design. It engendered a lot of support because of the nature of the school.

The CHAIRMAN. It was a unique opportunity to try these innovations.

Mr. KEMMERY. Yes. Yet it was critically important to have them

come to the table and say if we are going to remain internationally

competitive and have a world-class work force, we have to raise the

bar, but we have to help you do that. In other words, there are

things that we can bring to the table in terms of human resource

help, not just financial but human resource help, to ensure that

there is a quality educational program being delivered.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

This panel has really done a good job for me personally in understanding some of the new things that are going on and innovative

ways of approaching the challenge.

Senator Harkin.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I too want to join in that accolade for this panel as a whole, and

I have just a couple of questions.

Ms. Borra, please give the committee your views on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines as they exist now and the food pyramid currently

in place. It has been in place for about 30 years at the present

time. Could you define what is the ADA’s role in revision of the

guidelines and the food pyramid?

Ms. BORRA. Thank you. I had the feeling when you were pulling

the magazine out that you were looking at that question.

Yes—the American Dietetic Association is on record supporting

the work of the Dietary Guidelines and the food guide pyramid. We

have been active observers of the process, and the Department set

up an external review board that, actually, many of our members

have served on those committee structures, not representing ADA

but certainly representing their scientific expertise. Currently, the

process that is in place to look at the current science and update

the guidelines accordingly is in good shape.

The views in that magazine certainly represent another scientific

approach to things. There will be the convening of a group I believe

this year that goes into place to review the science behind the Dietary Guidelines this year so that possibly some of those considerations will be taken into account.

We do use the food guide pyramid as a teaching tool, as an approach to communicate this important information to consumers, so

we need to have some central guidance to work from. It is really

critical that the best science go into that food guide pyramid and

that we continually have it updated and appropriate to the science.

Senator HARKIN. Aren’t you a certified dietician?

Ms. BORRA. Yes, I am.

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Senator HARKIN. Well, the old food pyramid has at the base

bread, cereal, rice, and pasta, 6 to 11 servings. Do you agree with

that?

Ms. BORRA. Yes. The guidance to have that many servings—you

have to look at what they talk about as a serving. A serving of

grain is not the bagel that you see in the market today; it is probably one-quarter of that bagel. That when you look at what

servings they are talking about, the quantities will come out to devise a healthful diet.

Senator HARKIN. OK. You feel that you are consulted and that

you are involved with both USDA and Health and Human Services,

who share this jointly, in developing new guidelines?

Ms. BORRA. We have provided input and testimony to each of the

processes that have gone on every 5 years.

Senator HARKIN. Do you feel the questions that were raised not

just in this article but by Mr. Willett and others are adequately

being addressed?

Ms. BORRA. This new committee will have some of that research

on their table to look at, to say what does this mean and what do

they do with it. However, the dietary reference intakes, the National Academy of Sciences has just released a report that puts the

concept that the guidance in the food guide pyramid meets the National Academy of Sciences guidelines as well, currently.

Senator HARKIN. We seem to have a problem. We talk a lot about

nutrition education. When I was a kid, we actually had nutrition

education in school, plus we had exercise, which we do not have

today. We do not have either one. We do not have exercise or nutrition education in our schools. About the only nutrition education

that kids get today is the advertising they see on television. Of

course, with the billions of dollars that different companies have to

advertise their products, this is what kids get. This is their nutrition education. If you see it over and over and over again, well, it

must be all right to consume these unhealthy foods every day. It

does not say moderate your intake. I have never seen a McDonald’s

ad yet that says McDonald’s now and then is OK. They would like

you to eat two a day.

Kids get that from the earliest age, and that is really their nutrition education. I just do not know how you compete against that

unless we have something in our schools that can actually compete

against that.

Ms. BORRA. I could not agree more.

Senator HARKIN. I just do not know, and I throw that out.

Ms. Payne, thank you for very uplifting testimony. As someone

said earlier, that what you have done is ‘‘awesome.’’ It is amazing,

just amazing. You did this 10 years ago—is that what you said—

you started it 10 years ago?

Ms. PAYNE. Yes. We adopted NuMenus when USDA allowed us

to go by nutrient standards rather than food groups.

Senator HARKIN. You have no vending machines in any of your

schools?

Ms. PAYNE. We have never had vending years in the 17 years— we have a board policy against vending machines. We do not have

those vehicles deliver to our buildings with the advertising on

them.

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Senator HARKIN. That is pretty amazing. You serve fresh vegetables—evidently, you were serving fresh fruits and vegetables long

before my pilot program came into existence, and you have had

good experience with this.

Ms. PAYNE. We have had great experience. I do not know if you

are familiar with collards, but we served about 500 pounds of

collards the first year, and we have served over 3,000 pounds this

year.

Senator HARKIN. I spent most of my military career in the South,

so my first introduction to collards was not too good. I mean, military cooking is not the best, OK? I have later come back around,

yes, and obviously, they are very healthy.

Ms. PAYNE. We have a reputation—we can feed people out of the

weeds in our back yard. We always feed you.

Senator HARKIN. Well, my hat is off to you.

What advice do you have for other schools. There are 24,000 people in your community; that is a nice size community. What advice

would you have for other schools?

Ms. PAYNE. A couple things. First of all, you have to have the

commitment of the community. We have this brochure—you have

a copy of it—we send this out to parents, we put it in the Chamber

of Commerce office, and local doctors waiting areas.

Senator HARKIN. I did not see it. I saw it mentioned in your testimony, but I did not see it.

Ms. PAYNE. I am sorry. We have a few more. She is going to

bring you one.

Senator HARKIN. Thanks.

Ms. PAYNE. At any rate, we do a lot of advertising in the community that this is what we do, so if your children eat nutritious at

school, if you have ball games or are running around at night, it

is not as hard to go through that drive-through.

The other thing is the real commitment to not frying anything.

We turned our fryers off. The only time a fryer is used in our

schools is when we do a banquet at night where it is requested. We

do not even have fryers anymore in some of our elementary buildings; in our new buildings, we have not installed fryers. We only

fry for banquets.

Now, that is not to say we have an easy time finding foods that

we can meet the Dietary Guidelines, because high-sodium and fried

foods are a lot of what is available. Pre-fried chicken and so on has

already been fried, but we are not frying it again.

When you asked about the pyramid, it is probably heavy on the

starchy end. However, until we meet that pyramid, we are not

ready to go on and meet something else, and that our Nation as

a whole, we are not meeting that pyramid yet. If you really look

at what our Nation is doing, the meat and the fat would be the bottom. If you really look at what our Nation is doing, we are not

meeting that pyramid, and not in our schools, either, because we

are only reviewed for the week that the auditors come. I hear

that—‘‘I cannot balance my budget if I serve those foods, so I will

only serve them when the auditors are coming.’’ We do not fry any

time, and our children are eating 90 percent.

Senator HARKIN. Wow. That is pretty awesome.

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Ms. PAYNE. The parents have to buy into it, and our superintendent is a strong believer in what we are doing, and we do not have

schools that pull away from the program because he does not—it

is just one of those positive approaches where it is not really tolerated.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you.

Mr. Heiman, again, thank you for being here and for participating in the free fruits and vegetables program. I know that Ms. Nece

from Des Moines administers that program in Iowa.

From the States where we have had this program—Michigan,

Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa—at least the preliminary data that we

have is that it has been a great success and that some initial problems were gotten through in terms of handling it and that type of

thing.

The biggest question we get is will it continue. Well, we just do

not know, because it was just a 1-year pilot program. You shed a

different light on it that I never thought about in terms of all the

unintended benefits of this. What we have found is that—and I

guess maybe those of us who are upper-middle-class and those of

us who were raised in rural areas where we always had fresh fruits

and fresh vegetables growing up—and my mother canned it, so we

had stuff all winter long—we do not realize that for many low-income families, fruit is something they just do not buy—it is just too

expensive. We have had—and this is more than anecdotal—we

have had kids in these various States in this pilot program putting

fruit in their pockets and taking it home, and when they were

asked about it, they would say, ‘‘I have a brother at home, and we

have never had any of this. We do not have it at home.’’ It opened

my eyes to the fact that a lot of people in this country simply do

not have fresh fruits or vegetables very often.

I hope we can continue the program, and I hope we can expand

it. Obviously, it costs money, but as you pointed out, we have had

some private-public partnerships in Iowa—Hi-Vee Grocery has

been very helpful in Iowa; I know that—to help that program

along. Again, we have to look—and this is what is always difficult,

and this is what CBO never looks at—what do we save down the

pike for having healthier kids. We just do not look at that down

the pike, so it is always a cost but never a savings.

Again, I appreciate your testimony on that, all of you.

Mr. Kozak, I had a proposal 12 years ago that what we should

do to get kids to drink milk in schools is just give them free milkshakes. Then they would drink milk. It would cost money, but you

would get them to drink milk. Later on they told me that was too

much sugar, that they should just drink milk straight, and I said

OK, fine. We have to figure out some ways of doing this. There are

problems; there are problems with this.

Again, I thank you all very much. I do not want to go on any

longer. You have been here long enough.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Harkin, for your contribution to this hearing and for chairing the hearing today with me.

This is a good way for us to start the year in the Agriculture Committee, with bipartisan cooperation, a well-behaved audience.

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Thank you all for your assistance in keeping the hearing moving

along in a professional manner.

To all the witnesses who have been here today, you have really

been a great help to us. We know that you worked hard in preparation for the hearing and getting here today—you made sacrifices— and we thank you for that.

Our next hearing will be later this month when we will continue

to hear from witnesses from the administration. Those who have

the responsibility for administering the Federal programs will come

and testify. Also, we will be looking into some of the other programs specifically, like the Women, Infants, and Children Program,

and other food and nutrition assistance programs that the Federal

Government supports.

Until then, this committee will stand in recess.

[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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