the executive director of the campaign for better nutrition. i'm presenting a letter from members of the committee, about 100 members of the community signed on to it, asking you to provide leadership in improving the school nutrition programs as a critical strategy toward meeting the education goal for students an closing the achievement gap. i'm here after a day of a lot of bad news, talk about good news. we have having somewhere -- we have something very achieveable in front of us. we have short-term goals like adding supervisors that could end up saving us a lot of money. we have another piece, i don't know if it's in the report or not but we have old and failing equipment that is very expensive to maintain. it is very possible if we were to do an analysis of this that the cost of maintaining that equipment really would cover the cost of replacing the equipment and improving the quality of the school food because i don't care

when it's dated, if you overheat it or freeze it, it's not going to be good. we have some things we can do now for next school year. we need your leadership. we need your vision and goal. he has some great ideas but can only drive this cart so far. we need you to set the fwells -- goals and help us move forward. we have so much energy on the me to support you and bring in the community to support you. half the people who signed on to the letter are not involved with sfusd at all. they are ready to vote for you, pay tax there ares for you and bring in money from outside the school district's budget to support these children. we need to take advantage of that but we need your leadership an vision in order to do that. let's tap into the money, tap into the enthusiasm around the city, around food and tap into the committee and the energy we have to go out and reach out to the community and let's to

something great with school nutrition. thank you. >> good evening. my name is layna brook, i'm the parent of a 3 grarer an and incoming kindergartener. i have been involved in school nutrition issues for over a year now. i think what we heard tonight represents a tremendous opportunity to reflect upon what's working with student nutrition services right now as well as where there's room for improvement and like colleen said, i would like to reiterate and request that the board really commit to a long-term planning and visioning process that takes our school meals program to the next level. and as a member of the food and finance advisory committee, i invite you to go through that

process in partnership with us. i probably don't need to state this, but i will anyway, student nutrition programs are an i want federal part of the school day, an integral part of the educational experience that all the kids in the district have and that hungry kids cannot learn. so what ta shah reminded us, the difference between participation and consumption strikes home. we all know that many positive changes have been made with student nutrition services program over the course of the last 10 years but we still have a long road ahead of us. we want to see the consumption statistics go up and see the food waste statistics go down. we want to be providing as healthy food a as possible to the children and see them actually be exite about eating it. so i'll leave you with that. thank you very much. >> any comments or questions?

sorry that i turned it in at the wrong time. i'm a member of the food and finance committee since 2003 and i'm currently serve theags cheer of that committee. i also served as a member of the steer commeg for this assessment and reviewed drafts as well as finals and made a lot of comments. i think a lot of this information we know. some of it i would totally agree with the fact that we need area supervisor. i know that what they go through every day over at student nutrition services, and they absolutely do. i do believe we do need a long-term plan and i know ed has been drafting that. i wanted to acknowledge the positive trajectory that the program has been on under his

leadership. many of you heard these innovations that's happened and the positive trajectory but the salad bars, increasing meal applications, thanks to the district's commitment, elem nating competitive food which was a huge teal. we're looking at that evaluation. we saw positive impact on participation at middle an high schools. implementing grab and go. all of this has been done with existing resources or possibly some grant funding to really start things off. it's been continued with the same staff for the most part and the same money. so i just really want to acknowledge the innovation that has been happening and under constrained resources and really the leadership of ed, he's been a trusted partner to me and my department and to me personally and i rally appreciate working with him, working with his staff and i look forward to working on more positive changes. i know we're already -- we've already got a few in the works,

we've secured resources for, that we're starting to plan for and we look forward to coming back and telling you about the pstive changes. thank you all, i know you've been supporting this for a long time. i believe this program is essential and also we have to look at the data in terms of what are the costs of doing business here and other places and we have to frame the issue correctly because i haven't seen an analysis that showed me it's really able to break 9/11 a place like san francisco. i look forward to seing if somebody can do it but i haven't seen it yet. i do preesh all of you, i appreciate, you know, paul and the food bank for stepping in to fund the study. enge it's putting together some information that we haven't all seen complired -- compiled in one place. we may want to look over the data and discuss it and see if it's accurate and what we really think but i do think it's a positive step. i think the community is ready to forth support more innovation. thank you all.

>> commissioners? >> i want to thank you for the report. it's given us some important pieces of information. i think mrs. jones from public health is right, a lot of this information we kind of knew already but it's helpful to have it collected in one place. it was what you said about the impact of the two area supervisors since you hired them. i would like to see us look at how could we expand those numbers because from the analysis that i read it does seem like you can increase participation and you can increase reimbursement and increase revenues for the program by staffing it more appropriately. it seems clear that it's not staffed appropriately.

i know that it's, if it comes down to teachers versus area supervisors, we're all going to pick the classroom first. but i also think we don't want to sort of have a penny wise and pound foolish approach to this. i would like to see how can we expand that supervision because there could be a net positive effect to that. i also, i'm really interested in some of the recommendations that could be implemented now and i did read the f.n.s. response to the study. so i know that there's some -- something that they say are not -- will not have any net costs that s.n.f. says, take into account the staff time and some of these things but one of the things i think we should really look at is the recommendation to put recess before lunch. i have always thought, for my own, at my own child's

elementary school, i thought that was a great idea and that it would realy, it apparently has all sorts of other benefits, kids come into the classroom after lunch calmer, ready to learn, they eat more, which would be, you know, some of us whose kids want to play all the time and not eat. and so i'm wondering, if we could put that on a future curriculum committee agenda, sort of how would we get there? i know that there are some challenges around scheduling at elementary schools around that so what would be the tradeoff of doing that? i think that is something that -- a step that the board could take toward implementing these recommendations that hopefully would not be too costly. i also wanted to commend you, mr. wilkins, because i -- she may be one of the few in the district but my daughter absolutely loves the middle school lunch and would eat it every day if i allowed her to. she particularly loves the new

-- the chinese food serving containers, she thinks those are really cool. so you know, kudos to you and ms. reichert. and then i wanted to draw people's attention to a lunch time forum next month that spur is doing. oakland is referenced in the report as having made some innovations, having done some things that are a little bit ahead of us in certain ways. their nutrition director and one of their community partners are going tb to be at spur on june 12 talking about what they have done, that might be a good way for board members or community members who are interested in this to start talking about this. the vision for the future. so you know, i would like to see us move forward in some way to sort of -- and i don't know whether it's a master plan for student knew trig, i don't know if it's tissue i don't know what shape that takes.

i know that everyone is in survival mode at this point. it's not a demand that i would want to put, i know you're just trying to get your -- get through the day and make sure that kids are getting served so i don't know how we do it but i do think there -- we need to sort of articulate, here's where we want to be. here's the steps we need to take to get there. it may take us a long time. we may have to find additional funding but i think it's a worthwhile exercise to kind of articulate here's where we want to go. so, with that, i will yield the floor. >> commissioner mendoza. commissioner mendoza: thank you. i'm so grateful we have all of you here, it makes for a great conversation, one that's been happening in lots of different places. it's -- we had talked with

commissioner -- >> they talked -- had talked with us about two years ago and followed along the lines of what would it look like if we begun to cook again. so i'm thrilled to hear this coming from another source in support of that endeavor. and not that we could jump to it immediately but what would it look like? how would we go about it? and what makes it seem very tangible and very -- a very real possibility as i look and i also want to acknowledge ms. wamac's contribution to this endeavor, thank you very much, it's been a long time, i know you have been working on all the different money mechanisms to reduce the deficit that student nutrition has had over many, many years at sfusd and increase the money that's due to us, truly due to us and we haven't been able to find ways to get around the barriers, over the barriers and

through the hoops, not only making it ease wrer tore families to do that but also us to access that money that's due to us from the state and federal government. as i see our dollars coming in and the deficit going down, that gray cross section, that makes it seem like a real possibility for us to figure out how to do that as we, you know, are able to manage better our funding and resources. so i want to acknowledge that again, yes, we are not in, you know, full flush, you know, mode, but still, it is a much happier outlook and i'm anxious to see the close of the fiscal year because i know that it will hold a much more promising picture than many have seen in the past. i'm grateful to your work around that and also thank you partners for coming, some familiar faces in a different spot. happy to see that.

and i -- again, i would like to hear, still be able to attend that and invite some of our others, we're having a presentation about cooking against at sfusd. i think a lot of people would be open as a great partner as well. i'm happy to participate. thank you very much. >> thank you. a few questions and a few comments. just feels kind of full sishle because this has been a conversation that has its ebbs and flows. there are times when this is a super top priority and we dived in and other times it feels like et falls by the wayside. i know so many of you have been committed to this particular issue. i want to thank you for that. and i also do want to acknowledge your leadership, student nutrition has come a very long way since you took over. and even though it feels slow and it cons to be in the red and

all of the challenges that it has, it's better under your leadership. so thank you. so the -- i want to appreciate the analysis that you commissioned and the report that came out of that. it was interesting and certainly called out a lot of things we recognized. now i want to start trying to figure out what to we do next? what does that look like? i wondered on the area supervisors, is there -- has there been a calculation on the cost associated to having say seven area supervisors? if we needed to raise outside money or we wanted to think about this differently, what's that dollar amount that would, that seven area supervisors would cost us. and is there savings by having them because we're a lot more

efficient and there's, you know, less waste and all those kinds of things. what's that cost comparison ordifferential? >> we have two in place now as i mentioned. i think depending on where they are on the salary schedule, where they would come in, they're between $80,000 and $100,000 roughly fully loaded with benefits. wele of think there is a financial benefit to having them. it's hard to quantify exactly what that is because it's a combined effort of a lot of different things. but looking at how our numbers come out at the end of this year will be in part due to having those ategsal two people on board. we've been down one body this spring because zeta has been out, we're happy to have her back. and -- sometime soon.

so that will certainly help as well. but we want to have people who are dedicated to being out in the field with our folks who are in the schools and that free up ed and zeta to do other wok in the office like the longer term planning kind of stuff whereas ed and zeta have been splitting their time doing a lot of that work as well as the stuff that area supervisors would otherwise do. it's hard to say an exact number but i do think that it would be beneficial to have them on board and certainly as we add up the next couple of people in that keeped of a role, we would see bigger returns than maybe when we get the six or seven number that flattens off some. >> would be curious if some of

the larger pierces of that could be done at a part-time level or phase in level, what are those key pieces where efficiencies could be -- have some real shifts and is that something that can be done in a half day five days a week or three full days or whatever it is? and then i wanted to thank you for the inreese in revenue by the -- the number of free and reduced lunch applications. i think that's been huge. you've heard me say that time and time again. i'm tempted to just hire somebody who goes around and does all that because the revenue we'd be able to get returned based on that has -- is significant. and i just wondered if we know what that revenue increase is, you know, from two years ago when we had significantly less, fewer applications than we

currently have. so i'd like to see what that number looks like as well. and real -- i'm really happy with the water systems and nick has been a fireball an i think both the p.u.c. and the department of ed appreciate all the work he's done and have agreed to continue to help support his position for us. want to thank him publicly for that as well. there was an article from dana waldo today that i thought was strong and reminded us all that the work that we need to do and really want to, you know, dana has such a significant role in all of this, as you well know, as well as colleen and paul, i want to thank you especially and i'd like to hear more, colleen, on some of the ideas you have on that. and you know, we have -- what we have kept hearing in dana's

article and colleen, we need leadership on this. i'm not sure what that means in terms of what you need from us. i think that student nutrition is a priority just as technology and some of the other things that come through. i think the way we have managed those pieces is through some type of master plan or through some strategic, you know, plan that helps us to understand what you need and what it is and some of the goals we want to reach. it sounds like that's in play and i would love to know when you're thinking you could have that to us because i don't, you know, this is, for me, i know for many others, you know, this is a high priority. this is something we've supported every, you know, step along the way that you've made and really want to continue to that. i don't know if we have the kind of champion you want on the board, but combined, we can be that one champion.

and so, you know, as you get to that plates of figuring out what it is you need, i think that would actually help us to sort out, you know, how we can prioritize that for you. and then on the -- this is very cool. i love this. the -- the machine which, you know, i was hearing great things about. i met with your staff and with peter about this. one of the things, though, i had heard was that it might be better to pilot it at a middle school instead of high school because high schoolers have so many more options to go off campus. lincoln has that ability. but many of our middle schools who are pretty limited on that it would be nice to see how that works for them. i don't know if my child can eat another bagel and cream cheese and continue to try to gain

weight and grow nutritionally because that's pretty much what he eats every single day, a bagel and cream cheese. and then lastly, i think actually that was -- yeah. no. it's cream cheese. and then the other thing i wanted, the last comment i wanted to make was around, you know, in terms of the progress, there was a time when we knew that the p.o.s. was really important and value youble, the we can't get it in, now that it's there, it's one of those, well, duh moments. so so many of the things you've outlined are duh, to me, and we need to start moving on those pieces. and then grab and go is another one that i just, i really appreciate. it does speak to many of our kids that don't eat breakfast and come in and are sluggish and these are all the things that we

are trying to prevent through your department. so thank you all for the presentation. it was really helpful. i've got all this stuff all over the place now because there's so much information and i really appreciate it and i would love to see a plan that can help us to be more helpful to you. thank you. >> thank you to all of you. as you know, area of interest to me for a long time, i'm proud of the work we have done, we have a lot more to do. so i have a few questions i want to congratulate everybody on the progress we've made. especially on the -- this year, all of these things but the review is wonderful and also the increase, the decrease in the cash shortages and you know projections for the way we'll end the year are remarkable in my opinion.

i have to -- i have a couple of questions, really questions for you or for you or you about the some of the recommendations that were made. so it seems to me, i was hoping that we were actually going to get more information about what a cooking kitchen, what the impact might be and what it might take to do that and what the -- i appreciate it tissue appreciated, actually, the data about the -- about the balance of the -- how much we spend on food because of course not only is labor expensive here but food is expensive here too. wron how comparable all those things are but it's something that we should be -- one of the things that to me is the most challenging and kind of disturbing thing i'd like to address is that we continually get our kids, whenever we ask them, saying they don't get enough food from our meals. we need bigger portions, especially for high school kids.

that's really important and it's just a cost item. and of course they need better food. they want better food. i want them to have better food. and that's more expensive and more of it. those are the kinds of things i would like to have more analysis of so we would know what it would cost or even estimates on what we might be able to do incrementally. it seems to me, and this is why i'm saying superintendents, we need facilities analysis. we have cooking kitchens in elementary school with equipment that doesn't work and all keepeds of things like that that is a matter of, and you know, my hope was that if we could get in some way a feasibility study that would tell us if it would ever be affordable, given the food costs and the labor costs here to actually have a central cooking kitchen, what would it

cost? if we were then to decide to build such a kitchen, that could be the centerpiece of a future bond. ren rations -- renovations of existing kitchens could be part of that too. that could be a real possibility. but we don't have -- i don't think we even have the first piece of information to talk about it. let alone plan for it. that i hope we can do. i'm hoping that we can -- i was thinking, and then sort of -- i was thinking before but it follows on what commissioner mendoza said, that there are pieces of planning that we can do, that we could actually do with the staff we have. i'd like to see a plan which you probably have already, or at least some of it, for expanding breakfast participation so we would know what that looks like and that would mean talking to

our food bank and to you know, people who plan for elementary school and all kinds of things that you know far better than i but that is obviously a key to addressing the financial issues of student nutrition, to have higher breakfast participation, not to mention we need our kids to eat breakfast, they'll be better learners, happier, more able to address their learning experience in school. so if somebody can tell me at some time if that's a good idea if we can start doing that ithe way way -- away, if -- i'm not oppose at all to finding some outside resources and doing a master plan for the future of student nutrition, how we would get, where we would get, but i also hope and trust we could do some parts of this that would be the components of a master plan

that we know we need now. i'm also -- i'm also intrigued by the idea of putting recess before lunch. i think that's a really good idea. and i think it's one of those things that you know people just -- i'm sure you already have done this but if you said to elementary school principals they'd say, we can't do that. it's never like that. never been like that. it's impossible. but you never get to those changes unless you start talk about them. and the last thing i wanted to inquire about or say something about is about the -- also about the higher -- about the -- you know, the point of sale and the meal application returns. so the work there has been remarkable but also i'd lick to know if we are assessing how, you know, sort of compliance with our policies in that area, feeding every hungry child and

others, what else we can do. because we -- it's not that -- we're doing great, but we could do better. i think that -- i don't necessarily mean what more you can do, i mean what is not being done on this -- i don't mean us, i mean the administration, what other actions can we take in support of some of the work you have done. i have, as you know, always sort of had a bee in my bonnet about the way we hold the principals responsible. i give them tremendous support for what they've done. they've done a remarkably better job. but i still don't think that -- i don't think that that's -- that we've made that cultural shift in our school district yet. certainly not for everybody. i think it's hit or miss about how many people that run schools embrace the things we are doing and think of it as an asset to themselves and achieving their goals in the schoo