Tuesday 26 April 2011

Our Current School Situation

We think our followers need some information about our school, so they can understand the changes we are trying to make.  Our school has kindergarten through grade six and has about 220 students.  Kindergarten students only come to school for half a day so we have a morning and afternoon class that does not eat lunch at school at all.  Our school is an Earth 3 school which means we've completed 3000 environmental projects in the past few years.  Students have the choice to stay at school for lunch or go home to eat.  All of the students who eat lunch at school bring their own lunch from home.  We have microwaves to heat food, but most students don't use them.  Students eat in their classrooms (homerooms) or designated lunchrooms where they are supervised by our lunchroom supervisor team.  Students can choose white or chocolate milk and order their milk at the beginning of the year either by paying for the whole year or buying milk tickets.  In our class most of us never saw the form and were not asked by our parents which type of milk we would choose.  Some parents were suprised to hear they had a choice or how much sugar is in the chocolate milk.

We surveyed our students to find out how many of the milk drinkers drink chocolate milk.  This is our graph showing how many students in each grade currently have chocolate milk as their order choice.


We spoke to our principal about how to change the milk orders.  It takes about two to three weeks to switch the orders, but she agreed that if we can convince students to change their milk choices, we can switch our milk order by mid-May.  That means we have to convince students AND the parents!

We have plans to share our information.  The next parent council meeting is May 10 and we plan to send some students to that meeting.  We are also planning a schoolwide blitz of education about our milk.

Stay tuned for further developments.

7 comments:

  1. Being an informed consumer -- knowing what you're buying (and eating) -- is always important! It's good to read the labels of all your food to find out what's inside. Sometimes you're surprised! And it's good that you'll be helping to inform everyone about the surprising sugar inside chocolate milk.

    Also, is it normal sugar or is it high fructose corn syrup (which I believe in Canada can be labeled glucose-fructose or fructose-glucose)? High fructose corn syrup is even more closely linked with causing diabetes in children than plain sugar is: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823094819.htm

    I'm glad you'll be educating everyone on how drinking sugary milk every day is unhealthy. But I also believe that schools have a responsibility not to give young students diabetes-causing food. What if the students decide that they like the sugary taste of chocolate milk and don't care if it's unhealthy? Should your school still knowingly give you food that causes diabetes? I don't think so, and the responsible thing to do is for the school to only provide healthy options.

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  2. Good information. I hope you will be able to make a change before the end of the school year.

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  3. RE: J ... Aren't there some schools in Canada that don't even have vending machines? If a child wants to walk to a convenience store or fast food place, then that's their prerogative, but I really don't think schools should even offer poor choices. Not that they should all have salad and water, but no processed anything. Isn't that the point of a school being a place of education?

    That's amazing how many kids choose chocolate milk AND how many don't even have milk! Good on you for starting this education for the students!

    K

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  4. Thanks for all your hard work!

    Today when I took the kids to the rec centre for swimming lessons I noticed that one vending machine was ALL MILK. The whole thing. And guess what...there was ONE plain milk, TWO strawberry, and the rest -- every row -- was chocolate. At the *fitness* centre. Of course, the machine right next to it was full of sugary sports drinks. We are teaching really skewed messages about "health"

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  5. LA's new school superintendent just announced that they're going to eliminate sugary milk from the schools:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4OC1a2JSS4#t=46

    I hope you can convince your principal to take the same strong stand!

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  6. Good job on the Milk Revolution! Why are both of the Grade 2 classes mixed in together on the graph? When there are 2 classes together it makes us look bad! At our school we have 2 Grade 1’s, 2 Grade 2’s but only 1 Grade 3, 4, 5, and 6. Could you please change the graph to room numbers instead of grades?

    Cheers,
    Room 13

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  7. Good job on the Milk Revolution! Why are both of the Grade 2 classes mixed in together on the graph? When there are 2 classes together it makes us look bad! At our school we have 2 Grade 1’s, 2 Grade 2’s but only 1 Grade 3, 4, 5, and 6. Could you please change the graph to room numbers instead of grades?

    Cheers,
    Room 13

    Thank you Room 13 for pointing that out. We've remade our graph to more accurately show each class. Thank you for telling us and we hope you continue to follow The Milk Revolution.

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