001hey welcome to december 14th uh this is waz does lead reps learn focused on student nutrition thanks all so much for taking a time out if you had another tuesday afternoon to join us this is our last iteration of lead reps learn for the 2021 calendar year just a quick bit of housekeeping before we get started we will be continuing to do these meetings during the legislative session however they will be once a month we're putting together what our calendar is going to look like and we'll let you know what those dates are as soon as we have them finalized and during the session these meetings will be focused on legislative session updates um so we'll make sure you get all that information as soon as we figure that out um we're going to go
002through our typical agenda today going to our legislative platform on student nutrition we have representative mia gregerson here and leanne echo from ospi who are going to share some perspective from the field and then we'll be able to have some discussion with you all about how we can best move forward quick overview of our legislative positions that relate to student nutrition starting with funding for nutritious school meals for students this is a new position that was adopted this year at general assembly you all ranked it as priority number 16 for the legislative session this relates to the community eligibility uh provision the cep you'll hear a bit more about that i think from both of our guest speakers today just advocating for the thresholds to go from its current sixty percent back to forty percent
003which is uh what it was prior to 2017 you also have your universal free school meals legislative position that's also new in 2021 you rank that priority number 51 that's about a universal free school meals policy and then you also have the fully funding the hunger free student bill of rights position that came in 2020 and that also advocates for the same thing about fully funding the costs for feeding children in addition you do have a permanent position that relates to food service program uh that's really just about urging school boards to make sure that you all have comprehensive policies as it relates to this important issue so uh we are going to go a little bit out of order today we're going to start with representative gregerson thank you so much for joining us
004i know your time is limited um we'd love to hear from you about 2022 and what you know that's going to happen in the legislature as it relates to this thank you again for being here yeah thank you um i'm gonna just move myself a little bit over here so i can read my notes um yeah thank you for uh allowing me to join you today and hopefully i can field some questions if there are at the end but there's probably three main things that we're trying to focus on this year other than of course funding in the budget to support those that that need food in our communities both in and out of school so representative rochelle as you'll probably hear more about is really looking at providing a statewide cep which would authorize
005that a transition right and in order to do that then the state would be responsible for picking up or making our school districts whole uh what that would also do right it was it would align the ospi and others to really help with administrative work we understand that the federal our federal partners and the buildback better will increase the number of schools that are eligible for full federal reimbursement but by changing the multiplier hopefully we can really feed everyone and that sort of moves us to the to the priority around universal lunches and ensuring that all of our kiddos can get free healthy food while they're at school um as we all say we cannot actually expect our children to learn if they're hungry the other initiative is really around modernizing our income verification so
006we all know that we use the frame reduce price meal data for just about everything and so trying to move away from that representative berg has been championing that i think she's been working hopefully with ospi and others to really look at how to do that and it sort of pairs nicely with how i talked about the cep and having um hopefully having ospi help us to centralize some of this work and take the burden off our school districts and so there's still some more details to work out but i know all of you know why this improvement would be good for everyone and then the other third one is representative dolan is really working to champion the request that we had heard out of our staffing issues and that's allowing some of our retired
007school staff to work uh more than their current limited hours um she's working through those details and again this does not include administrative staff um but again it would definitely help with the shortage in our nutritional areas and helping make sure that folks are available to feed our kiddos um the other i want to thank ospi for their work and hopefully leanne can speak to it a little bit today is when our kids are quarantined how we can really make sure that we have great messaging we're able to all sort of have that coordinated community response when things like that happen whether it's flooding up north or quarantined kids other types of natural responses or responses that we need to make so that um just sending kids home without any type of plan or helping
008to get um them connected to local community efforts um is something that becomes easier for us to do i think we did a great job during covid and doing that and so that framework is sort of set up and hopefully we can sort of standardize that so we all know how to implement that when the time comes so that's really it um logan when it comes to our priorities so far okay thanks for sharing i'm gonna go to rob perkins who has a question for you rob i i put the full question in the chat book i was wondering which alternative income attestations have been discussed and whether they align with any federal definitions for poverty knowing there's more than one of those or would washington really be leading the way in initiatives like this
009if these bills passed that's a great question and i have to admit that representative burgs in the weeds on this one so i'd hate to miss speak when it comes to what she's designing or what she's thinking i'm hopeful that like like i mentioned osb i might have some examples of models and definitions that they're considering i do want to pay a mention to the self sustainability index um that's through the university of washington it's not the perfect model right there's other models but really it helps us to think about how to uh understand what it takes for a family a family unit there's 200 different types of families right um and to and to really hone in on those specific strategic needs very different if you have a family unit of three and a
010child is a toddler versus a 16 year old those deans are very different and then the other right is the cost of living if you're in king county it's like closer to 32 an hour if you're in another county it could be half of that so again as you're asking those good questions around what how do we define poverty i think the one of the great parts about this hopefully modernizing this is that the state can put an extra lens on what it takes for our families to live with dignity um and have enough resources then to be able to participate in society thank you i know one thing we've been advocating for is a single federal definition for poverty uh and that's just the federal level but we've asked for that from a couple
011of representatives well maybe we can put reference in there somehow that if and when there is one that we can you know uh take a look at that thank you thanks rob let's go next to sarah bennell uh so similar to rob i put the whole question um in there and ref gregor said thank you so much for joining us today um and for the work you're doing around this um it's a particular passion priority um as i was a under nutrition student as a child um uh i know that last year the state passed um coverage uh to cover the cost of reduced lunches um so that students qualifying for reduced lunch would now actually also have free lunch and um i'd love to know if the possibility of changing that percentage um would
012impact that that that coverage that got passed last year uh if i understand the question correctly and again i think i'll also have leanne speak to this i'm sure she can answer it but um we made strategic efforts to use our our federal funding to try to close the gap on areas that we thought we could do be a one-time investment and help with hunger housing and health and i think that those investments um will help drive the legislation that i talked about this morning because we want to move closer to universal school meals right we we want to get to the point where school districts don't have to feel the pressure of where they fit in and out of these different percentages and that every child that goes to school they can just come
013in and expect to be able to participate shame free so i'm hopeful that that you know that answers your question um and that in those details we're gonna do our very best to really center that vision um and and that ramp regardless of what the federal government is doing but also use what the federal government is doing as a onboarding way to um really light this thing up and hopefully do do this much better than we had in the past okay any other questions for rep ferguson sarah do you do you have a response or other comment no no i was just saying thank you oh okay if that's it rick and you're off the hook six minutes early you're welcome to hang or take your six minutes and do something good well thank you
014and i um i have to jump off i'm actually the brand new power of attorney for my uncle who is in stage four cancer so it's all very new to me so i actually have to hop on to a call to help start hospice so that's why i'm leaving i i felt like i i don't want you to think i'm leaving just i'd rather be with you also and but because this is very important to me and i will leave my contact information in the chat and please reach out anytime during session call or text this is a very important topic for me and i want you to feel no matter where you are in the state how small or larger district is that we are including you and we're trying to customize your needs
015to make sure it fits uh in the statewide approach so thank you for being here at gregerson we're sending you lots of love oh thank you take care and we'll see you soon bye-bye i'll put my stuff in the chat all right okay uh so up next we have an echo here from ospi to share leanne i've got your powerpoint slides up if you want to just uh let me know when to advance them i'm happy to do that great thank you i'll do a quick audio check make sure you can hear me fine we can hear you alright great thanks for having me today um and as logan said my name is leanne echo and i'm the director of ospi child nutrition services um i did prepare just a few slides just to level
016set some of it may be very familiar to you so i'll move through quickly but i if i know nothing else i know that federal usda nutrition programs are just as confusing and complex as department of education different rules and regulations so a few things that helps to have a little bit of background to kind of understand how it all fits together you can go ahead and advance um so just real quick um what are usda child nutrition programs the one you hear thrown around the most is just the nslp which is the national school lunch program but i just briefly wanted to mention these other ones in case you hear them in context the school breakfast program the after school snack program fresh fruit and vegetable program and at risk after school program some
017of those national school lunch and breakfast any school can operate those regardless of your free and reduced price eligibility levels those other programs do require a certain level next slide all right so we often get asked the question do schools have to provide meals and interestingly enough at a federal level there is no requirement to offer meals however washington has put a couple laws on the books regarding school lunch and school breakfast and it's all based on that percentage of students that are low income and it's 25 or more for school lunch and 40 or more for school breakfast where you're required to offer a meal program next slide and then as representative gregerson was just speaking to and thank you as a group for your focus and recognizing the importance of nutrition as a
018registered dietitian i've dedicated and believe in the power of good nutrition and i think all of us can understand we've all experienced too many meetings pushes our lunch back and all of a sudden your stomach is growling and it's hard to be totally focused when all you can think about is the fact that you're hungry next slide all right so logan had asked me to to say just a few words about kind of like where we have been during the pandemic and where we're going so hats off to all of you because school meals were pretty incredible during the pandemic usda did put in place some waivers that allowed some flexibility to focus on providing support to students and boy did school nutrition programs and school districts step up with some pretty heroic efforts to
019if you're thinking back to march last well march of 2020 that was pretty amazing we had schools closing one day and the next day we were already uh pushing out meals it was a pretty amazing thing to witness next slide additionally usda started a couple other support programs and again hats off to schools and districts that had to jump in and do the the lion's share of providing data to make this program work but you may have heard of pandemic ebt or pebt it was a usda program where it took students that have would have normally been receiving meals at school for free or reduced price students and it provided that same equivalent funding that gets paid for those meals onto an ebt card that their families could use to provide meals next slide so
020what's going on currently with school meal programs once again usda continues to provide flexibilities and waivers this school year schools have the operate option to operate sso don't need to know the details it's called the seamless summer option which makes no sense to you but the bottom line is it is allowing schools to serve meals free of charge to all students so it doesn't matter what category that you're in just everybody um is getting a meal and when representative gregerson talks about you know a universal meal program that's what's happening this year essentially is universal meals everybody's getting a meal free of charge to also support schools uh schools are based on a per meal reimbursement rate for every meal that they serve this school year they offered a higher reimbursement to help schools out
021meet the needs and then they also allowed multiple meal pattern waivers recognizing the supply chain issues and that is primarily you may have heard from your own districts continue to face significant food and supply chain issues and ongoing staffing issues next slide representative gregerson also mentioned this we did put out this resource it's called getting meals to quarantine students there's lots of different options and that's what we did in this document and at the end of the slideshow i'll share our web pages but some some schools some districts have capacity to maybe do some individual delivery some do not and that's okay there again there is no requirement to provide meals to quarantine students but there's options um with at the very least we really encourage schools uh when you're putting kids into quarantine to
022at least at the very minimum let them know other resources in their area where they can go to find food supports slide all right so um representative gregerson talked about this a lot the community eligibility provision so what is this this is a usda so it's a federal program and what it does is it recognizes a school district that's in an area that has a high number of free reduced kids and it says okay you qualify because of this high number of kids we're going to make some assumptions about how many kids there are figure out a reimbursement rate and then all kids at your school get to eat for free we don't need to collect household applications meal applications everything is based on direct certification numbers so what is direct certification direct certification is
023when a student qualifies for our meal programs by qualifying through another program and the biggest one is if they qualify through dshs for snap benefits or tanf or medicaid benefits ospi gets that information directly from dshs and that's what we use to qualify a school for community eligibility provision next slide so there's some great things obviously to community eligibility provision because from a student or a family perspective it looks much like universal meals right at a school that's running cep everybody's eating a meal there's no distinction between you're free or you're reduced or you have money in your account just all kids eat for free so huge reduction of stigma reduced paperwork for families we tend to see schools that go to community eligibility provision just generally more kids are eating meals and also if
024you think about the school lunch line if you've seen a regular one operate most of the time kids are having to punch in like their number or scan a card well when you're no longer trying to keep track of who's free who's paid who's reduced that all goes away and it speeds up those lines and there's no negative account balances which sometimes can can cause some issues next slide all right but so what's the crux around cep and again representative gregerson was talking about this so from the usda side there's no longer a requirement to collect a meal application so i was just talking about direct certification so when a student qualifies being directly certified that family doesn't have to fill out a meal application in washington state about 40 percent of the kids qualify
025of the kids that qualify for free and reduced price meals are qualifying through direct certification the remainder of those kids those families are filling out a meal application so when you go to cep you don't have there's no meal applications being filled out but as you probably know we have so much legislation rules programs in our state that rely on poverty data so you can't just let it go because all of a sudden things don't work correctly so we have a family income survey and i say we in the sense of ospi that it's a standard form that schools are required to use but as you can imagine all of a sudden you have a form that's not linked to your student getting meal benefits your incentive to complete and return the form significantly decreases
026so that's where then we've seen some subsequent legislation that tries to plug some holes as far as lap funding and different funding formulas to try to account for this issue that we sometimes see with a poor return rate on family income survey and then we lose a lot of poverty data conversely we do have schools and districts who implemented the family income survey with a lot of intention and actually had a really good return rate and in some cases higher than meal applications next slide right the other hot topic i wanted to talk about is breakfast after the bell and this was legislation that passed a couple years ago it requires a breakfast after the bell program and any school with at least 70 or more students eligible for free or reduced price meals and
027breakfast after the bell means breakfast that is offered to students after the beginning of the school day so it could be breakfast in the classroom or at senior high schools we often see a passing period where the students have access to pick up a meal next slide breakfast after the bells benefits is we see definitely higher meal participation improves access to meals to all students and we see improved student outcomes including attendance behavior and academic performance next slide okay so on the screen i've got our web page on the ospi web page it's actually falls under policy and funding and then there's all links subsequently on that um i can turn to questions um actually i was going to backtrack a little bit when when representative gregerson was talking about this other way to try
028to collect income it's this whole idea around collecting meal applications and the family income survey all kind of rolled up in one and also pandemic ebt so right now when schools are collecting meal applications each school has their own or each district has your own system some purchase online applications some do it all through paper but there's not one system so we're talking about one system and then the other thing is families don't know what service and what form they're filling out for what so i think cep has only exasperated that right so families excited i get free meals i don't have to fill out a meal application but they didn't realize that they needed to fill out an income application or family income survey for their school to get benefits and then also for
029their child to get benefits such as reduce sports fees or reduce ban fees again it's just so confusing to families they they don't know what is what they just need and the help and support so um i haven't not seen the draft bill language but i think what they're talking about is a universal state system where any family would go in to an online system and it would help shepherd them through right they would just answer questions that they know the answers to about their student and in the background the system would be figuring out is this a usda application is it not is it telling the family oh you're already in the direct search system you know just check this box if you want to share your information with other programs would just help
030guide them through um my i think it's a fabulous idea it's a it's a big task as any it system is but would be pretty pretty extensive but i wanted to bring that up as something that she was mentioned so i will go to the questions in the chat box and the first one is is pebt still in effect this year that's a great question dshs just submitted the application for washington so typical government programs they just don't tell you that you can do it you have to submit a state specific application describing how you'll carry out the program and then they can approve it or not approve it if we do get approved it's much more targeted this year it would be about a available for students in schools that had to close due
031to covet so we do have those few schools and districts throughout the state that have closed due to a covid outbreak or quarantine period it would be those specific students enrolled at those schools that would be eligible for pandemic ebt however one of the things and the reason why we made sure that we were getting in our application is this will make us eligible for summer ebt so that would mean that in june we would upload all students that are eligible for free and reduced price meals because all schools are quotes closed during the summer so they would all get benefits so that's why we really even though it was this is going to be a little wonky and we couldn't make it we had to really narrow our scope to what we could do
032we really wanted to get in that application so we could have those summer benefits available to students all right and i'm going to answer the next one what regulation guidelines are in effect to support students with a variety of dietary needs that's a great question also that actually is a usda requirement that you accommodate for special dietary needs there is a little bit of paperwork and that is again just to keep the students safe that we need or the school needs a signed off like diet prescription from the doctor so they can feel confident in what they're providing to the student but again that is a usda requirement that you have to accommodate for special dietary needs all right dave's question is if a district is cep what free and reduced price number is used
033for other programs such as lap and e-rate it's still a poverty number it's just going to take that direct certification number so any student that's directly certified that's still feeding into ospi into cders so we've got all of that and then it's adding in those family income surveys the trouble that some districts are finding is the return rate on the family income surveys so as far as whole numbers are concerned that family income survey gets counted in the same way a meal application would okay and can we go to rob perkins who has a comment rob thanks leanne um i appreciate the introduction you've given here today i am i am hoping there is a way in with respect to sarah's question that the student who needs a special dietary need can merely attest it
034because if it costs some cash money to see a doctor in order to get a note to get the thing um that is a that is an equity barrier uh in my mind and i know that ospi has got their eye on that um but so whatever you can do with that my next question is and i'm speaking to you basically out of all my roles as a parent as a school board director as a interested community member and also as a software developer who spent 20 years writing user interfaces um if you're developing an i.t system please gather the most vulnerable of our families and get them to tell you what it is that they need on those four inch smartphone screens that are the only things that they have to fill out these
035forms because if we don't and if we end up just putting it in skyward or something it will be too difficult to use on those platforms and we know that those platforms are necessary and uh we can't control that part so uh that's my heartfelt advocacy for that as you're going forward please find the people who know how to do this and and consider human factors yeah i i absolutely agree and i'm always like and just real questions i always think it's like the we need like the eligibility income like the turbo tax of that world right where just ask families like real questions that they would know the answer to um in in such a manner that that's how they would answer instead of filling out a form they'd just be answering questions like
036how many kids yes just yes i agree thanks rob um and i will add a um and clarify on the the meal um one thing that is as long as they have an iep the idea is that we just don't want food services out there making assumptions about what a kid can or can't have so um if in lieu of the doctor if they are working with the school nurse meeting with the family and there's a clear understanding lots of times we can go through that avenue but because i understand especially i live in a remote community doctors are few and far between okay any other questions for leanne at this time thanks for being here rob okay if not leanne thank you so much again for being here great overview um one of the
037things that i've loved about these meetings over this last year is how easily translatable all of the information that comes into these meetings is and how really anybody can pick this up and like understand so thank you so much for making it so simple for us thank you for being here you're welcome to hang out and keep listening to the conversation or if you need to step off that's also great great thanks again for having me and don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions that come up later on great thanks leanne thanks okay uh so we get to spend the rest of our time having a little bit of discussion um before we dive into that i'm curious um if you are a cep district i'd love to know that if you could
038just say i'm a cep district or our district has cep in the chat i'd love to know and i'd also love to know how many of you might have breakfast after the bell programs that's just good information for us to have so i guess my first question for you is based upon what you heard both from leanne and from representative gregerson is what do you need or what do you want in order to be more effective in providing school nutrition programs is there anything that wasn't talked about today that's on your mind if anybody wants to share make a comment ask a question uh they can do so in the chat thanks for letting me know about cep and breakfast after the bell programs if y'all wanna stew on that for a minute that's cool
039i'm also curious from you um [Music] if there's any interest thoughts or comments about any of the potential legislation that ref gregerson was sharing about i heard her speak to three separate bills and so i'm curious any thoughts on those if you're interested in being someone that we share the bill drafts with when we get those if you're interested in possibly providing testimony or sharing some stories from your district we'd love to know that from you as well diane you have comment about nutritional standards do you want to speak to that actually leanna has her hand up maybe she wants to also speak to that but actually this just made me think a little bit off diane's comment but um somebody had asked about excuse me the bill that passed this last year on reduced
040price co-pays compared to cep so i wanted to hit on that it gets confusing so when you're not a cep school so you're just operating normal national school lunch program and you've got kids that qualify for free meals kids that qualify for reduced and kids that qualify for paid that is the situation where the state ledge passed the bill so the state is picking up that difference so now in washington if you are a family that qualifies for free or reduced price meals your meals are free of charge and again we're talking about standard counting and claiming a school or is not operating cep when we change to cep that's a little bit of a different kind of claiming scenario and i don't want to go into too many details but you take this identified
041student percentage that is basically your directly certified students and you multiply it by usda multiplier and then it gives you a claiming percentage so if your claiming percentage ended up being let's say 90 it would mean if you served a hundred meals usda is going to give you reimbursement for 90 of those meals at the usda free rate the district would have to pick up that those 10 meals out of a different source and so lots of times when people are trying to determine if they're going to operate cep or not what they do is they we run the numbers for them and we look at the combinations because there's a certain level of isp that when you take it times the multiplier which is currently 1.2 it gets you to 100 and that's the
042that that's the best case scenario right for school district is that if you hit that it means every meal that you serve you're getting the full usda reimbursement for all of the meals that you serve so in that case in cep that reduced price copay it's not figuring into it at all it's not attached in any way however when we're running the numbers for um ledge when they're talking about different ways to support it we do kind of talk about if all of a sudden you did have statewide cep and all districts were operating cep the savings or the money that's would not be paid for reduced price co-pays could then shuffle over to help support cep and i hope i didn't cause more confusion i know that's a whole lot and yeah and then
043there's nikki has a question about can cep be at some but not all schools yes that is correct you can do cep district-wide you can do it certain schools and you can do any kind of combination so we work with a lot of districts on doing these kind of different scenarios of the combining different schools it's all about the numbers because we're trying to get them as close to that 100 percent reimbursement as we can that's the most beneficial to the school great okay um diane i think your mic is back now i'm back sorry i live in a strange little space in troy cities where it just comes and goes our internet so one of the problems i know uh kenwick is is not alone is because of supply chain issues we have had
044to go out or our nutrition services people have had to go out and purchase um on the economy so at a big box store i won't name a place um and so they're having to substitute to the best of their ability what was what they were going to feed but it's not always as nutritionally guided as we would have gotten previously and so i know that some concerns are out there about high salt levels higher fat levels um higher sugar levels and things and so that's an issue and i know that's not anything that um ospi can can do anything about right now but that's something to think about in the future is you know we we went away from icky bad things that kids were eating mountains of fries every day and uh trying
045to feed them nutritionally and now we're in a bind so i don't know if there's ever an answer to that but it it would be good to think ahead about what what we might want to think about doing in the long run for that yeah i have actually a couple bits of information and yes uh we totally um understand again that's the support hug your hug your uh school food service tractor today please uh has not been been fun um but we there are waivers from usda and we're you know there will be no you know review issues around you know not meeting your meal pattern the biggest hint we've been giving districts is really communicate to your families and that's what we do when we get complaints in just help them to understand how
046difficult things are right now you know if you can put messages on your uh your facebook pages or whatever when meals change i think about those kids that do have special dietary needs we talk to them about making sure those families really know about those last minute menu changes and then the other thing dan you might be interested in is that we have been working with the washington state department of agriculture and are actually just starting a new program this year that provides grant funding and additional reimbursement to those schools who utilize washington grown foods so i know that's a big interest and we really really are trying to address that in kind of some systematic ways to help districts and support that use of more local foods thanks i live in canada wick so
047we're right in the middle of all that wonderful beautiful locally grown foods but this time of year it it's not always as available but i know we do take advantage of that great thanks again for more information leanne i love that you're still on the call um [Music] any anything else that's on the tops of your minds right now as it relates to this as it relates to your involvement as an individual director or district or boston's involvement in the legislative session um what other thoughts do you have how else can we support you so i'm really interested in this initiative that i guess the legislators take on to determine how to measure poverty um so we're in a district it's a high poverty district we've chosen not to do cep because of our staff
048did the analysis of what that would mean to some of our other programs not having that free and reduced uh measure for things like e-rate and things like that and they determined that it wasn't beneficial to do that so um i'm glad to hear that they're looking i'm particularly i mean one other measure that i guess didn't come up which i'm glad it didn't come up because it's suspect and that is the census uh so the federal government under title one uses the census data to determine poverty rates and and allocate title 1 money but that data is perpetually old because it's only done once every 10 years and the method for updating them in between is problematic so um some kind of i'm really interested i guess um logan you asked if anybody's interested
049in reviewing bills i'd love to review any of the bills that are related to how we're going to go about measuring uh poverty and districts because i think there's some really potentially good ways to do that but you know i want to make sure that you know districts are being held uh whole in terms of doing that in an accurate way so anyway that's what i'm interested in okay that's great dave um i will definitely make sure that you are on my list as soon as we see a copy of that from richard um i have a meeting with her coming up i don't remember exactly when uh but that's top of my list just checking in about that bill um so i'll keep you posted as we learn more anybody else i was curious
050how um different legislation or guidelines around nutrition provide purchasing power or opportunity for like our esds or um individual districts so that like when certain things are passed it then gives a bit more muscle to like those collective purchasing organizations who work on our behalf that's a great question um leanne do you have any specific thoughts on that yeah um actually uh one of the newer things in the last five years has been a usda requirement that we ospi conduct a procurement review specifically of school meal programs and although one more thing for us to do and you guys to comply with um i will say that it has really provided some great opportunity for us to do a lot more training around procurement and i mean because that's the point of it right is
051to get your bo your best bang for your buck um economies of scales when you're you're preparing that many meals so i will say it has been good and we do have two staff that that's specifically what they work on and yes they have taken a whole lot of calls um this school year as we've worked through emergency procurement so um yes helping them understand what they can and can't you do and taking advantage of that allowability of emergency procurement has been key this school year specifically so great point thank you both well sarah you i i do i thought of another one as leon was asking so on the other end of the cycle um i was also curious what work is happening around composting efforts for food waste um and compostable or reusable
052utensils um or um food delivery items yeah great it's like it's like did you guys peek in my head of what's swirling around in my head in my email um also speaking of legislation so the department of ecology was impacted by legislation that was passed around food waste this last year and so school meals ended up on kind of that list of things that would be addressed so what is specifically impactful is effective january 1st there is a [Music] restrictions around automatically providing utensils um disposable utensils with meals which in non-covered times that really you know normally kids go through the lunch line and they go pick up their silverware and they self-select it which is fine we've been having to do all kinds of crazy things during coped right packaging up meals and and
053so a lot of people had a lot of concern and we were just like you know what just right now just you know concentrate on feeding kids like don't get too hung up about this um and then along with that i think it's next like 2023 comes into effect there's a ban on some of those poly styrofoamy type clam shells which again not terribly impactful to school nutrition programs because we tend not to use those as much anyway but a little bit of impact but perhaps what was bigger on department oncology's kind of list of things interesting enough is uh recess before lunch and most people go what like are you talking about the right thing but the studies are incredible if you send kids especially young kids out to play before they eat their
054lunch they come back in they get down to business they've got their wiggles out they sit down they eat their meals and they drink their their milk much in much higher proportions than they do prior to that and then there were some a few other ones around that but yeah we are definitely we're on that committee that's working it's um the report is called use food well washington and i think department of ecology is just getting ready to release that yeah i think that's right use food well washington thank you it's great info thanks super great info um i will find the link to that report and send it out to this group so that you can have a chance to look through that um thanks for sharing liam um also i just want to
055comment on a couple of things in the chat diane and erica i added you both to the list for reviewing these bill drafts so as soon as we hear from them you'll see that any other questions comments thoughts considerations before we wrap up today okay oh diane so um i leanne i guess for you but for all of us um i've been impressed at what seattle public schools did with um using food that our immigrant families are used to eating and that increased student um eating which surprise it's something that they like and something that they're used to is there any way that that ospi or the state or anybody else can encourage that or help us with that i just i thought that was such a great idea because i've watched our kids come
056and look at a hot dog and it looks like a rock to them it doesn't look appealing frankly not appealing to me either but it's not appealing to them and is there any way we can encourage that i guess yeah that's um it's a great comment diane and we actually have been working on it through two channels one is we currently have a usda grant where we're actually working with some of our native american schools to develop recipes specific to their culture so that kind of started us down that road and then at ospi through our diversity equity and inclusion work that is one that was one of my team's desire is that we want to see if we can provide better support to making school meals more culturally appropriate based on the particular school
057so it's definitely on our radar and something that we are working towards and i fully agree with you diane it's uh you know part of the reason that i am so passionate about school meals is i always tell people for a lot of kids this is the only time that they sit down and see what i consider a complete meal like it's like lots of different things right you have fruits and vegetables and greens and lots of different things not just a one item meal and so i think school meals that also goes for culturally appropriate meals it helps when kids sit down and see something familiar and then also it's good for kids to see different types of foods from different cultures and to be exposed to that and again school is a place
058to learn it's a place to learn that just the foods that you eat in your house aren't the foods that everybody eats in their house right and thank you for saying that last part because that's what i was going to add culturally appropriate yes for our students who come from different food backgrounds but i was lucky enough to you know live in a family where anything everything that we could find in the country those are things we ate and tried and so kids aren't um always given that option anymore in their families for whatever reason that may be and um you know there are some things that i've eaten from foreign countries that i thought this is better than anything i've ever eaten at home so i'd like our kids to have that just world
059view of food and that's an important part of our lives so thank you for doing that yeah sarah yeah diane i'm so glad you brought that up because i've been thinking it in the background in this conversation i'm familiar with that program happening in seattle public schools and have been similarly inspired by it and then wasn't sure to what level that would be the kind of thing that the state could um help make happen across the state um and two things come to mind is one that we're moving forward with ethnic studies as um that this not to be separate from our learning that we understand that this is a another mode of learning while it's nutrition at the same time um and we have so much opportunity in that moment um to intersect with
060our learning and to build family engagement um so i'm curious about i don't expect an answer on this man but just the curiosity that comes to mind is the way that it intersects with the ethnic studies work that we're trying to do across the state and the pedagogy that's available um and then i love that you're sharing that there's been some work beginning with some of our native american schools and tribal compact schools and that led to the thought around um that however this looks at rolling out statewide that it's a framework that invites co-creation with the families in our communities um so that it's co-led by so really is community driven by each of our unique communities um and can be co-created locally as a way that we get to know each other better
061um and come around food together thanks sarah and thanks everyone uh anything else that one can i just want to express my appreciation also i never realized how um how much i still need to try to understand about the funding of just feeding our students and i really appreciate this so much because every time i do this i learn a little bit more and i realize the more i know the less i the less i know um so i hope i'm saying that right but thank you so much for logan and everyone who's been providing this information um it's so vital and i really appreciate the discussion thanks karen and so do we we appreciate it just as much getting to interact with our partners and getting to really hear and unpack some of these
062issues with you all as members it's super valuable to marissa and i as your strategic advocacy staff as well well if i can add one more thing i as i'm sitting here and looking at the names and some of your districts i can i now have even a greater appreciation for districts that i've identified as has great food service directors i see that they've got people behind them an administration that is supporting them and believing also in the power of good nutrition so it all makes a lot of really good sense to me so thank you for your support of our programs and nourishing kids great sorry i'm like also finishing typing a chat message um thanks all so much for your engagement in the discussion today and for being here um i do want
063to close uh with some news that i want to make sure that you all hear about there will be a message coming to the full wazda membership uh in the coming days but i wanted to share that our friend colleague and advocate brian sims who was our the third member of our strategic advocacy team passed away this past weekend on saturday morning it was something that we've known for a while has been coming he had stage four cancer but you know it's super super unfortunate news but wanted to make sure that you all know and my ask of you so we honored him wasda honored him with the hero and education award this year at annual conference and his ask in his thank you letter was for all of us to reach out to our
064favorite teacher or a teacher that had some super strong impact on us and so my ask is that you carry that forward and if you have any teacher that has made some significant impact in your life to please reach out to them and make sure that they know how much they've met for you and how much they've done for you in brian's legacy and honor i'd really appreciate if you could all do that before the end of the year so sorry to end on a sad note but just wanted you all to know um and again there will be a message coming to waz to staff soon we don't want to get ahead of the family uh so once they are you know publishing more widely the information there we do have something ready so
065thank you all so much for taking the time to be here today hopefully you have a wonderful holiday season take some time to see your family see your friends and we'll see you all back here in the new year in january