Join us on January 16 at a Rally to

Improve Food and Nutrition Education

in NYC Schools

 

On Wednesday, January 16th, NYC teachers, students, and partners will rally on the steps of Tweed Courthouse, (52 Chambers Street) asking New York City Council members to support Int 1283-2018 Reporting on food and nutrition education in NYC schools, a proposal for increasing food and nutrition education equity in all NYC public schools. If this bill passes, schools will be required to report annually on the food and nutrition education being taught to students in each grade. We will also testify before the City Council's Committee on Education in favor of having the NYC Department of Education submit an annual report on nutrition education in city schools. 

The rally is part of the WELL (Wellness, Equity, and Learning Legislation) Campaign, an initiative started through the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College Columbia University   to create a state wellness policy that connects the social, economic and structural conditions in a student’s environment and their health. As a partner in the WELL campaign, we are hoping that this rally and hearing will drive more educators and school-based organizations to become vocal advocates about the need for more direction and support of nutrition education in NYC schools. Currently, there isn't any publicly available information on how many schools are actively implementing nutrition education to meet  NYC health education requirements. 

The only public information available on nutrition education programs occurring in NYC schools has been provided by the Tisch Food Center through the A is for Apple report. The report found that only 56 percent of New York City’s 1840 public schools had one or more nutrition education programs provided by external organizations. In the Bronx only 54.8 percent of 447 schools had programs. NYC schools need a system in place to determine how much or how little nutrition education students are receiving.

If the bill passes, a report would be published annually and be available to the public on the NYC Department of Education website. The report would include: the average frequency and total minutes per week of food and nutrition education provided, the number of students (by race, ethnicity, gender and eligibility for the free lunch program), the percentage of total time school personnel and external food and nutrition education providers spend teaching food and nutrition education to students at each grade level in each school and the amount of professional  development training they receive, and costs incurred and funding received to contract with an external food and nutrition education entity to provide nutrition education. With a reporting system in place, schools and school-based partners focused on nutrition education will have a better sense of gaps and barriers to providing nutrition education in NYC public schools.

Bronx Health REACH would like to have teachers, students and parents share their personal stories of how nutrition education has improved students’ health and educational experience at the hearing scheduled for January 16 at 1 p.m. at City Hall.  If you would like to share your story but are not sure what to say, we invite you to attend our Bronx Health REACH Nutrition and Fitness meeting on January 15 at Morrisania D&TC, 1225 Gerard Avenue, Room 214 at 3:30pm-5:30 p.m. We will discuss the bill in more detail, find out who plans to share their story and recruit more participants for the rally and to fill the hearing room. All who are interested in attending the rally and/or hearing or would like to testify should contact Moria Byrne-Zaaloff, Program Coordinator at Bronx Health REACH at (212)633-0800, ext. 1287 or mbyrne-zaaloff@institute.org.

NYC Department of Education Reports

Increase in Physical Education

In December Bronx Health REACH and our PE4All Coalition partners submitted testimony to the New York City Council Education Committee to extend programming for PEWorks, scheduled to end in June, and to also request expanding the Local Law 102, NYC Department of Education Reporting of Physical Education in NYC schools. PEWorks, a successful program developed to revitalize physical education has made great strides in improving physical education (PE) in NYC schools. The Program has increased the number of elementary schools with trained PE teachers to 85 percent, has trained 6,200 classroom teachers in physical activity programming, and has funded wellness programming in 207 schools and provided facility upgrades to 40 schools.

The NYC Department of Education reported a significant increase in the percentage of students receiving the required amount of physical education in the 2017-2018 report of the state of physical education in NYC. We reviewed the annual reports from the past two years and found a five percent increase in students receiving PE in high school and a four percent increase for middle schools. We believe the improvements are a result of the PEWorks program, a DOE initiative to revitalize physical education in public schools. (Click here for PEWorks Year 3 Report.) Overall, the 2017-2018 Annual PE Report of the NYC Department of Education determined that 60 percent of all Bronx public school students are receiving the required amount of PE per week.
 
This is great news! But we all know that more progress is needed for true systemic change in the Bronx. Thirty-one percent of Bronx public schools lack a certified full-time physical education teacher, 18 percent of Bronx public schools receive less than the required amount of physical education, 46 percent of Bronx public schools lack space to conduct physical education classes indoors and only ten out of 1299 schools have a designated space for adaptive physical education.

If this reporting bill gets passed, there will be additional funding for PEWorks  as well as expanded reporting on topics such as: public school compliance with PE curricula, professional development for certified physical education teachers, adaptive physical education provided to students with disabilities, and after school athletic funding. Although the committee is no longer accepting testimonies, we encourage you to reach out to your local councilmembers and ask them to support this bill.

Launching the Second Annual

Bronx Salad Competition 
 

If you submitted a photo last year for The Bronx Salad Toolkit for Schools competition and did not win, you have another chance to win as Bronx Health REACH and Grow to Learn NYC will be having another Bronx Salad for Schools Competition this spring. After a fruitful competition last year, we are raising the stakes and the flavor! This year schools will compete for the best salad dressing recipe to complement The Bronx Salad.

All participants must grow at least two ingredients (two herbs are acceptable) in their school gardens, harvest the ingredients, make The Bronx Salad recipe, create their own unique dressing for the salad, eat it and take a photo.  Each participating school should send a photo of the students eating the salad and the recipe for their dressing to bronxsaladtoolkit@gmail.com. Competition entries are due May 24th.

The winning school will receive a Bronx Salad celebration prepared by Garden to Café/Office of School Food and a presentation by Chef King Phojanakong, who created The Bronx Salad and the Bronx Hot Sauce — the key ingredient in The Bronx Salad dressing. 
 

Join us for the next Schools based

Nutrition and Fitness Meeting:

Tuesday, Jan 15 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.