#Education
Target:
Piedmont Public Schools
Region:
United States of America
Website:
www.jamieoliver.com

Numerous studies indicate the essential role nutrition plays in successful learning at school. According to the Piedmont Public Schools Child Nutrition Department “student achievement starts with nutrition and well-nourished students perform better in the classroom.”

Healthier school breakfasts and lunches are part of an ongoing national campaign to address child wellness. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was recently signed in to law to raise nutritional standards in schools nationwide.

Concerns specific to parents in the Piedmont Schools district include increasing the amount of fresh foods provided to students, ensuring the overall nutritional value of school meals and assuring students get enough food to eat during school lunch.

The food program at Piedmont Public Schools is making great strides in monitoring and enhancing the nutritional content of school meals. This initiative is designed to provide a documented guide from which all school officials and advocates can work.

Parents of Piedmont students would like Piedmont Schools to lead the state and the region nutritionally, as well as academically.

We, the undersigned, call on The Piedmont School Board and School Officials to advocate for the health of all children at Piedmont Public Schools. We ask for success from the lunchroom to the classroom during the 2011-2012 school year and after by calling for:

* A transition to more fresh foods and less processed foods served for lunch and breakfast;

* Keeping a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables on the salad bars and offering seeds, nuts and legumes;

* Serving whole-grain bread products the majority of the time;

* Serving all of the day’s vegetables with each meal unless students ask not to receive one or more;

* Allowing students at least 20 minutes from the time they sit down at the table to eat lunch as recommended by the Journal of Child Nutrition and Management, keeping meal times as close to the middle of the day as possible and when possible, serving lunch following recess;

* Offering all students Kindergarten and up the choice of regular and large-portion (with scaled up cost) lunch options to ensure students do not leave the cafeteria hungry; and

* Implementing other improvements as determined by school officials to increase the nutritional quality of school breakfasts and lunches.

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The Support Nutritious School Breakfasts/Lunches petition to Piedmont Public Schools was written by Leslie Berger and is in the category Education at GoPetition.