_{Thumbnail photo: Fish tacos were on the menu for Del Norte High School students in this file photo from last year. Julie Bjorkstrand, Del Norte Unified School District’s director of nutrition services, presented an updated wellness policy and guide to the DNUSD Board of Trustees last week. | Photo courtesy of Josh Mims}

Julie Bjorkstrand’s attempt to clear up confusion surrounding a wellness policy and accompanying guide turned into a plea for community involvement after questions about classroom birthday parties, cupcakes, pizza and other treats persisted.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires school districts participating in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs to adopt a school wellness policy. Such policies are required to include guidelines that set nutrition standards around food and drink sold or provided to students on campus during the school day. 

Treats for classroom parties fall into the latter category, said Bjorkstrand, Del Norte Unified School District’s director of Nutrition Services, but it doesn’t mean having to give them up entirely.

“This week we’re trial-ing something over at Mary Peacock where the kiddos have been getting a lunchtime pizza party,” she told the Board of Trustees on Thursday. “It’s pizza provided by Nutrition Services, so it’s compliant and we have been providing it. It’s their reimbursable lunch so the site and the teacher are not even having to buy the pizza or anything to accompany it. It comes from us and it’s a [fully] reimbursable meal.”

Del Norte Unified can be flexible in its Guide to School Wellness, but if it doesn’t follow guidelines both the USDA and California Department of Education set, the CDE can take back funding it provides for school meals, Bjorkstrand said.

“They can say, ‘Well, judging by all of this, we know from October to December you were not in compliance with the program, so we’re going to take back those reimbursements,’ which is probably around $300,000 and $400,000,” she said, posing a hypothetical. “At this time, talking about budgets and all of that… My nutrition budget is a standalone. And as long as I continue to manage my budget in such a way that we stay in the black, we don’t require contribution from the general fund, and we haven’t taken a contribution in five years I think.”

Four DNUSD trustees adopted the revised version of the Guide to School Wellness on Thursday, directing Superintendent Jeff Harris to attach the wellness guide to Board Policy 5030, the district’s School Wellness Policy, which they approved on May 22. Trustee Area 5 representative Michael Greer was absent.

The DNUSD Board of Trustees adopted Board Policy 5030, its original wellness policy, in 2006 and made revisions to it in 2010. In December 2010, federal lawmakers approved the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required any school district participating in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs to develop a wellness policy.

The Board of Trustees approved a revised version of BP 5030 and adopted the Guide to School Wellness in October 2015. 

According to Harris, who referred to the changing guidance surrounding school nutrition as the “cupcake wars,” he had recommended that the School Wellness Policy recognize the Guide to Wellness and state that DNUSD would implement the recommendations it mentions.

The wellness guide was due for its first three-year review in 2020, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic that assessment was bumped to 2022, roughly two years after Bjorkstrand became the nutrition services director.

“I was still a little bit under water and doing the every-day parts of my job, so really looking in depth at this didn’t happen,” she said.

The School Wellness Advisory Council began working on the guide’s latest update in September, creating an interactive document via Google Drive and extending an invitation to “anyone who lives here that wants to participate,” Bjorkstrand said. About 15 people attended Council meetings, she said.

“We’ve updated a good bit in our new document,” Bjorkstrand told trustees on May 22. “I think we’ve made it stronger. I think we’ve made it more clear. There were some things that weren’t accurate, so I think we’ve eliminated inaccuracies. And we added information about the Community Eligibility Provision.”

The Community Eligibility Provision program is a non-pricing meal service option through the USDA that allows districts in low-income areas to offer free breakfast and lunch to its students.

On May 22, when the discussion turned to updating the School Wellness Policy, Bjorkstrand said one of the fundamental changes she’d like to see was to swap out the nutrition services director as the responsible party for a school’s compliance with the wellness guide with each campus’s principal.

On Thursday, she reiterated that proposal, stating that the School Wellness Policy also touches on physical education requirements, health services, safety and security as well as social and emotional issues.

“There’s so much more in this than just nutrition, which makes it really untenable for me to be responsible for site implementation,” Bjorkstrand said. “Because I know nutrition, I can’t tell you the required minutes for PE off the top of my head. I don’t know that because that’s not my area of expertise. So it’s important that the principal knows what their site is doing.”

Though Bjorkstrand sought to provide clarity, parents and staff still had concerns over classroom celebrations. According to Mary-Michelle Cupp, a teacher at Redwood Elementary, the stipulation in the guide stating that celebrations involving food can only be held in a classroom once per month isn’t included in the School Wellness Policy.

Cupp said she found a Nutrition Services Division management bulletin from May 2015 discussing competitive food rules, which outlines the criteria that must be met in order to have a “competitive food sale.”

That bulletin also states that federal and state rules do not apply to foods given away at a celebration such as a birthday party, Cupp said. She urged trustees to strike that recommendation from the wellness guide.

“Trust me, we’re not having 25 birthday celebrations every month,” Cupp said. “For a lot of kids, that birthday cupcake they get to bring to share with their class is their only birthday party they get to share with their friends.”

Kristen Peterson, a teacher at Mary Peacock Elementary School whose children are enrolled in Del Norte Schools, said that if there aren’t any state or federal guidelines that call for limiting the number of celebrations in a classroom per month, there’s no reason to have any limitations on parties.

“There’s no requirement that we need to be so exclusive [that] you can’t bring cupcakes for your kids,” she said. “The whole verbiage about classroom celebrations is unnecessary. If you just strike all of that, it would be better.”

Bjorkstrand said she felt that striking out an item in the wellness guide negates the point of having a School Wellness Advisory Council.

Nutrition Services employee Rose Tatman, whose kids go to Mary Peacock, played devil’s advocate and said there are equity issues officials should also consider when limiting the number of classroom celebrations that can be held.

“Some parents may not prioritize bringing something for their student at school during their birthday, whether they can’t or they don’t, it’s really not for us to judge,” she said. “But having a recognition throughout the month — these are the students with birthdays this month, yay! Hurrah! They can all bring a cupcake or a cookie or whatever — changes the time allotted for that as well and gives a different priority in the classroom to having it be celebratory and special and not just sort of everyday.”

A copy of the Guide to School Wellness can be found by visiting DNUSD.org and clicking on Board Policy 5030. The guide can also be found at delnortenutrition.org.