S9E15 – School Lunch: Justice On The Menu

S9E15 - School Lunch: Justice On The Menu

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is School Lunch: Justice on the Menu.

Dr. Val: School lunch. Alright, so I think we all have had experiences if we attended any school ever with school lunch, right? So everyone should be able to connect to this topic, but I can promise the listeners this conversation's probably gonna go in a place that they might not have thought about.

Andrew: It certainly goes in a place that I had not thought about. I mean, justice on the menu. My thoughts around school lunch were not at all tied to justice of any form, environmental, social equity. None of that was related until this conversation.

Dr. Val: Yeah, so I mean, I honestly have fond memories of my school lunch experience. I mean, who does not enjoy a rectangular piece of pizza…

Andrew: Yep [laughing]

Dr. Val: …with corn on this side? All right. At least that was what my pizza came with, and maybe an apple.

Andrew: Some chocolate milk.

Dr. Val: That's right. And then when I was able to buy things, like kind of off the menu in middle school, I don't remember a day in middle school that I did not eat an ice cream Snickers. Like that is what I… that is what got me through. How about you, your ideas of school lunch?

Andrew: Yeah, I have memories of various things that were enjoyable from school lunch and then also plenty of memories of like unidentifiable blobs of something that was supposed to be meat and having some kind of negative reactions to some of the food that was served as well. By high school I was able to walk across the street to the little convenience store and buy, I think, um, Hostess cupcakes for lunch most days. So you had Snickers and I had Hostess cupcakes.

Dr. Val: That's right. Thankfully, our guest today has a lot more to offer than our memory of our school lunch experiences. Who are we talking to today?

Andrew: Yes, Dr. Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor at The University of Wisconsin Madison. All the best people seem to be in Madison, and her research focuses on school food, and kind of the systems and politics that go around it. She wrote a book called The Labor of Lunch, Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, and has really been kind of trying to shift the national conversation about school food by, tapping into both the history of the people who serve the food in schools and then the potential that the school lunch system has for real meaningful change, both from an environmental standpoint and for more sort of a social justice standpoint.

Dr. Val: You know, that was not at all where I thought the school lunch conversation was going. And so I'm very glad that we had a listener send us an email to tip us off about it.

Andrew: Yeah, so listener Amy from Madison sent us an email, recommended that we check out Dr. Gaddiss' work. Um, I think I was initially a little bit skeptical and I think I sent you an email about it. Val, I asked if it seemed interesting and you were like, yeah, definitely. That seems interesting. And, uh, and so we had her on and it was definitely interesting. You were right.

Dr. Val: Alright. So I want to get to hear what she has to say. Let's, let's move. What do you think?

Andrew: Alright, let's take a listen to Dr. Gaddis.

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Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: My name is Jennifer Gaddis and I'm an associate professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And I do a lot of work with different kinds of organizations, from labor unions to youth organizations, to parent teacher organizations, all in pursuit of really trying to make school food programs the best they can be for kids, for our broader environment and workers across the food system.

Andrew: And why do you care about that? How'd you come to find yourself studying school lunch?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah. Well, I'd always been really interested actually in, in environmental justice issues and personally kind of passionate about eating good food. And so, I was really interested when I started to learn more about local food systems when I was in graduate school and you know, seeing like farmers markets and community supported agriculture all around me and also like, big retailers like Walmart starting to get into like the organic space and I don't know that I really believe that like the way that we really achieved social change in our food systems is solely by quote unquote voting with our forks because that really suggests a kind of democracy that doesn't really exist when people don't have like the same kinds of economic resources to be able to devote to that kind of project of social change through like consumer action.

So that got me really interested in thinking about like, what else is going on in food systems. And I started hearing about something called farm to school programs that was happening in the community where I was living at the time. And basically farm to school is this idea that instead of sourcing a lot of pre-made food from big corporations what you're doing is actually sourcing ingredients very locally, oftentimes from more small scale and mid-scale farms. So it's this idea that you can keep more of the public dollars that we spend on school meal programs circulating in local economies and keeping more family scale farms, like, financially viable, and a lot of times those farms are using more sound environmental practices as well.

So I think that really got me interested in just how you actually start to think about changing the environmental impact of food systems through like a larger scale public program. So I just started kind of realizing that wow, if we could actually start to shift what things look like in our school food program, that's a pretty huge lever for change nationally because a lot of people I think, don't really realize like the sheer scope of what, like the National School Lunch program is today. It operates in pretty much every single, you know, neighborhood in the entire country. We pre-pandemic had over a hundred thousand unique school buildings in the country that were offering this program. And about 30 million students every day who were participating. So that's a really, I think big cultural landscape in terms of, you know, what a food system looks like and how you can start to change it. But it's also a really important, I think, economic landscape to try to change because pre-pandemic, the federal government was spending over $19 billion of funding every year on school breakfast and lunch alone. So that's a pretty big, you know, investment of public funds.

Andrew: So it's like this sort of like personal drive for environmental justice, for quality food, combined with this realization that people just like changing what they buy, particularly in an era where you've got, you know, Walmart's co-opting terms, like ‘organic’ means that if you really want to see change happen in the environmental justice space, the size and the scope of the school lunch program just provides like a much bigger lever to actually drive change.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, so I think that our current program, I really try to encourage people to think about it as like, so full of potential and like, you know, a good thing that we have this program. But we really have to think about what the program could become with broader, deeper kind of systems change. So not just like, tweaks around like, you know, the margins in terms of like what the nutritional parameters are, but a really deep pretty fundamental redesign in terms of who feeds whom. How? Why? And you know, these kind of big, big questions about what the social organization of school meal programs looks like.

Dr. Val: Okay, Jennifer. You blew my mind like 17 times.[laughing]

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Oh.

Dr. Val: Lots of things, that hopefully as you continue talking I would love to hear more about the intersections between this and an environmental justice issue. I think that will attract a lot of listeners who might not have thought about this in that way.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, I think one of the things that made it feel really different to me versus farmer's markets or community supported agriculture, was just the fact that the majority of people who participate in our current program are from lower income households. So the vast majority of people who participate in the school meal program are, you know, from households that would qualify for free or reduced meals. That said, pre-pandemic there were about 30 million kids who were participating in the school lunch program daily. At the time there were also about 20 million students who had access to the program and were choosing not to participate.

So I think one of the things kind of connecting to this idea of voting through fork that I've historically felt really passionate about is communicating to people that participation in the program really matters. And so when we have a lot of opting out of the program, particularly from more affluent households, which also skew White, that's a real problem in that it communicates to public officials that they don't necessarily have to invest in it as much, right? Because we tend to see more investment and more support for universal programs like, for instance, social security that are really, like broadly supported and that, you know, everyone kind of feels like they have a stake in. So I think that unfortunately, there are a lot of households who feel like school meals aren't really for them and don't participate because they might not feel good about the quality or maybe they're worried about the amount of time that their child has to eat, or allergies, or maybe they just like packing lunches and it's something that, you know, connects them to their kid as a form of care. Like there's a whole lot of reasons why people might choose to pack lunches.

Dr. Val: Mmmmm. I'm just curious about if your research has identified shame as another reason why people might not participate.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, I think shame. And just the stigma of this being like a government handout versus something that you expect to be like part of the school day. Just like, you know, any, any other part of the school day where, you know, it's, it's this really super strange exception where we don't really expect at least in public school settings, people to be paying for, you know, anything except for food. They aren't paying to go into an English class and receive that English lesson. So I think it's, it's very strange in the way that school meals have been sort of carved out as this exception.

Andrew: I would guess another reason that people don't participate is, is because of their impressions of the quality of the food that they're getting. Is that right?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah. So we know from research that on average the school meals are actually more nutritious than what people are bringing from home. There are a lot of variations across the country. That said, I think when we look at it kind of from a you know, a step back and we see that wow, there's 20 million students who don't participate and most of them are from like this more affluent demographic that really communicates, that we have a problem and that we have a program that people who can afford to opt out of are choosing to opt out of, like, we should really have a program that everyone wants to participate in. Like, to me that would be like the marker of success because otherwise, how do you actually have, like your school cafeteria, the space where students eat, be a space of inclusivity and a space for students to really connect with each other? You don't.

Dr. Val: Love to hear what you know about the evolution of the school lunch programs. From what I've always heard, it was the Black Panthers who started this. Can you just talk a little bit more about that?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah. I think the Black Panthers piece there is a lot to be said of that, particularly in relation to school breakfast. But the school lunch program is much, much older. So the school lunch program most people would point to 1946, the end of World War II. In part like that's true. That is when we passed something called the National School Lunch Act, which created a permanent national school lunch program that would be operated in this nonprofit manner like we see today. And it would have this dual goal of supporting children's nutrition and supporting domestic agriculture.

So that is technically when the National School Lunch Act passed. But one of the things I really like to do in my storytelling around school meals is to show people that actually before we got to that point of creating this big federal program, we had over 50 years of experimentation and organizing at the community level. And most of that was actually led by women's groups. And I think of this as really important because sometimes we see these really big systems in the country and it can sort of feel like they've been there forever and like individual communities or like activists can't really play this big role in terms of policy protagonism or, you know, in self-determination in terms of, you know, what different forms of care, education, or food infrastructure should look like.

So I really like to bring people into the 1890s, the Progressive Era, which is really when a lot of home economists and women's groups really started to experiment with this idea of having not-for-profit school meal programs. So they were really interested in trying to use a lot of their skills and abilities to create more nutritious and safe and affordable access to food and schools for children. So some schools actually at the time had for-profit vendors who would sell like, sort of like the junk food equivalent of the day. And these women felt like we should be providing more nutritious food to students and we really should be taking this real private burden of feeding kids and coming up with a public collective solution for how we ensure that students have nutritious meals at school. So they really did a lot of work to create this experimental network of different kinds of programs across the country, some central kitchens, some in you know, individual schools in rural and you know, urban communities across the country.

And it was really in the 1930s that the federal government first started to provide sort of financial and food assistance to these programs. So through the Works Progress Administration, they actually employed many thousands of women all across the states and Puerto Rico to really start providing meals to students. So that really started to happen in the 1930s where schools were receiving some sort of subsidy of labor.

Dr. Val: You know, whenever I think about this time period in labor, I always think of like people of color and women in particular. Can you talk to me a little bit about who was there, who was doing the work?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: It was in particular women who they were employing in these programs. And, you know, to this very day, school nutrition programs are over 90% women. Like, it's a very, very gender divided field. And that's one of the reasons I think why we see the wages in school nutrition programs. I mean, it's tied to, you know, feminization of so many fields, right? It's most often the case that school nutrition employees are going to be the lowest paid employees in the district . And I think a lot of that has to do with the very early origins of the program where you know, back in the 1890s, through around the 1920s in order to get their program set up a lot of these women had to kind of go to male led school boards and male led schools and sort of convince them that they could do this thing. And don't worry, it won't cost you any money. Like, more often than not this expectation that there would be, you know, a pretty hefty component of whether it be free volunteer labor or, you know, local money. And so I think it started to kind of be baked into a little bit of the DNA of the program that really it was reliant on either free labor or very cheap labor from women in particular.

Dr. Val: Hmm… we have a problem with that in this country.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: We sure do. And, you know, as the program really developed, there was this real growth during the Great Depression and kind of through World War II and people after the end of the war, I think saw the need to invest in nutrition. So a lot of times people talk about it as like, defense nutrition, like making sure that you actually have, you know, a population that would be fit for war, should you want to do that. Right. And I think that you know, it's a little bit broader than that. I'm being a little bit snide, but I think that you know, some of the recognition really came from when in the war people were doing fitness evaluations of soldiers, like recognizing like how many different illnesses were related to malnutrition. So I think there was this real emphasis on expanding the program after World War II for a variety of reasons. And it really did expand through the 1950s and into the 1960s.

Andrew: So it sounds like we have this like network of mostly women's groups thinking about the importance of feeding kids in school and then creating programs to do that largely based on this like kind of free or cheaper labor provided by the women. And then in like the wake of World War II, the country realizes, oh wow, there are like national security benefits to school nutrition. So, you know, much the same way we started investing in education more broadly during the space race. Now the federal, federal government is like, okay, we've gotta get involved in this. We need to invest real money and actually expand this program. But my guess is that the benefits that came in the wake of World War II, as with so many other programs in the country, were not shared universally.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah most of that expansion was actually in more White middle class communities. And as you can imagine, that was also like this time period in which a lot of suburbs were being built. And so a lot of the schools that were built in the suburbs in the post-war boom, they really benefited from the fact that, you know, they knew that there was this national school lunch program. So of course, when they're building their schools, they're going to put in a cafeteria and a kitchen because, you know, it's harder for kids to walk home. And also if you're building a new school, why not take advantage of that versus a lot of urban schools that would've been built at that point in time, like in the 19, like, kind of tens to twenties during this expansion of public education. You know, they wouldn't have necessarily been built with the same kinds of kitchen and cafeteria facilities because on the one hand, there wasn't a national program that they knew existed at that point in time. And also a lot of those you know, students I think were expected to be walking home for lunch or getting food from street vendors or whatever the case may be because of like the very different geography.

Andrew: So you have this, the kind of suburbanization of the country that happens in the wake of World War II. And not only are we, you know, living further apart, we're increasing the number of people who have cars. Houses are further apart, people are less likely to walk anywhere, less likely to have food immediately available to them. And we've said, okay, we value this thing, which is school lunches. So we're gonna fund it at the government level. And so as White people are building suburbs, we're building schools that have nice cafeterias that have the ability to cook food because we know this revenue's gonna come because we know kids aren't gonna be going home for lunch because it's not really practical. And meanwhile, in the sort of, you know, more urban cores in the cities where you have older buildings, we don't have the same capacity to even offer lunch to kids even though there is now technically this kind of subsidy, but we don't even have the ability to offer it.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yes, I think that's very much what was happening. So, fast forward a little bit to like the 1960s and there started to be I think just this real recognition of how many people, particularly people from urban and rural communities, and disproportionately Black and Brown students who really should have access to free school meals, who didn't. And there was this really amazing community based effort. Gene Fairfax, who worked with the NAACP led this really amazing community-based research effort where like, she partnered with basically all of these different, like women's organizations across a lot of different racial and religious orientations to go into their own local communities, document like how many kids were actually getting free school meals. And brought that data to national attention through a report called Their Daily Bread and it was a report that came out in 1968 and they really did this amazing work to document how widespread the need was for free school meals and how there was this really systemic failing of schools to be providing free school meals and how many students should be getting meals and weren't.

So, I think for a variety of reasons that Community-based activism really not only provided a data source for local communities to actually bring lawsuits against their school boards, but also I think created a big national conversation about the need to not only expand access to free school meals, but to actually have a standard like economic threshold that would sort of say if you are below this or above this, like you do or do not get free meals, but no more of this like individual like decision making at the community level that really can create the conditions for people to experience a whole, you know, slew of negative things and judgment and unfairness.

Andrew: So we've basically, like as a country decided, okay, hang on. We can't just like have the kind of White power brokers decide who gets free lunch and who doesn't. We're gonna have this like, uniform standard. We're gonna say, okay, here is the threshold. If you qualify, you're gonna get free lunch. And if you don't, then you don't.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yes. So, what ended up happening was the federal government did create this new standard for free school meal eligibility, and that was released I think in 1970. And I think from that point communities just had a lot more legal tools to be able to kind of bring their school boards into compliance with the federal program. And so what we ended up seeing was this real impetus to expand access to free school meals to the communities that had been historically excluded from it. But instead of like the federal government, investing a ton of money and building out kitchen and cafeteria and infrastructure in schools that didn't have it, what ended up happening was they made special assistance funding available, but it was limited to use on equipment and food. So what we ended up seeing was a lot of central kitchens that had like their own assembly lines for making little pre-pack TV dinner style meals, because well, that's a big equipment cost and a food cost, but a very, very minimal labor cost.

So it was really at this time that, like back then they called them the volume feeding industries. So like, the airlines and other kinds of institutional like food service operators really descended on the school meal program and were like, “Hey, you need to feed a lot of people in a very small space with limited infrastructure like, We know how to do that. Let us become your experts.” And so there's this huge entrance of frozen food manufacturers and you know, just even like for-profit management companies like the Aramark, Chartwell, Sodexo of today they had actually been like prevented legally from being involved in the school meal programs. That was actually one of the big wins that a lot of the home economist and women's groups got, when the National School Lunch Act was passed in 1946, was they got this provision that the programs would be not-for-profit and could not be outsourced to for-profit like caterers. But in the midst of this whole, like right to lunch movement in the late 1960s, early 1970s, The National Restaurant Association, which some people refer to as like the other NRA, they did a lot of lobbying. [Andrew laughs in background] It's true. Like people in the food world. Yes. It's true. Yeah. So they like lobbied on behalf of their membership. That this restriction should be dropped and the expertise of for-profit management companies should be allowed to come into schools to really help solve this crisis of needing to really scale up the meal provision in the schools that hadn't been providing meals to students historically.

So they were able to get that law changed and now I think probably around 25, maybe even a little bit higher than that, percent of schools actually contract out their meal programs to these for-profit providers. And I always tend to be skeptical in the realm of school meal programs where we know most places, this is a program that's really under-resourced. And I think it's hard for people even within this nonprofit system to really make ends meet financially. So then when you have a for-profit provider coming in, I’m always just sort of a little skeptical about like, how's a for-profit company carving out profit in a not-for-profit program. Usually it's through reducing costs by really making conditions worse for workers in terms of wages, hours, benefits or reducing food quality.

Andrew: Okay, so, so we have this national level program. We've now expanded access to it. We've said, here are these standards. And now we've given communities tools to say, you know, we actually should be getting free meals. And rather than the federal government saying, okay, well we better than actually invest some real money and resources, the federal government, as so often as a case says, okay, we're gonna actually outsource this. We're gonna find private companies to do this cheaper and more efficiently. And what that ends up meaning is actually worse quality food and worse conditions for workers.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, but at the same time, the Reagan administration starting in 1980 they just really slashed like the federal budget overall. But the school meal program, the budget was actually cut by over 25%. And so, when you do that, like you can imagine that that has a lot of consequences in terms of the quality of the meals. And so I think that there was starting to be like some social backlash against some of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s, but then come the 1980s and Reagan like totally slashing like the school lunch and school breakfast budget. I think what we end up seeing is I know just this tremendous amount of people saying, “Well, we don't really wanna participate in this program anymore.” And I think that that really decimated a lot of the gains in terms of the right to lunch movement where it became this thing that really it's like for a while this program was disproportionately feeding like White middle class students. And then it kind of became this thing where the White middle class students left and then it kind of got like stigmatized as like a social welfare program. And…

Dr. Val: I need the listeners to know that, that Andrew is nodding vigorously at this point.

Andrew: Val's White supremacy headache is acting up again.

Dr. Val: It’s acting up. It is acting up, of course.

Andrew: I mean, it's yeah, the parallels are, I mean, they should be unsurprising, but you know, you look at, government housing, you look at public schooling, you look at school lunches, it's the same thing now, now that it becomes something that is primarily used by Black and brown kids, now we can kind of squeeze as much juice out of it as possible. I think something that's really interesting is that you know, kind of, I'm thinking about parents today, most of us were in school, in the wake of the Reagan administration's cutbacks on funding. And so one of the challenges I think right now is convincing people that school lunch today is not what school lunch was in the ‘80’s. You know, what is, what has sort of changed since then that should make people reconsider what their view of school lunches is.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah. So I think that there's a lot that has changed. So one thing that I think is a real challenge now is that a lot of people remember what school meals looked like when they were growing up. But Michelle Obama, she was a huge champion of really trying to push forward the conversation about school lunch reform and when the Obama administration was in office during what's called the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Process, there was a lot of discussion about school meals. And what ended up happening was a piece of legislation called the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 was passed. And that went into effect in 2012. And people talk about that as kind of the most sweeping reforms in at least three decades of the national school meal programs. And what it did was it really lowered the amount of sodium in school meals and increased the amount of whole grains and created kind of this whole new pattern for different kinds of vegetables that schools would be serving. So instead of like, just like starchy vegetables it really emphasized variety and freshness. And there was also this real emphasis of getting salad bars into schools as well.

So there were a lot of changes that were made during that period of time to the nutritional parameters of the school meals. And there started to be I think a stronger interest on the local level in really trying to do more from scratch cooking and more local sourcing. And I think part of that had to do with really wanting to support more local agriculture. To have more control at the local level, to not have all the different kinds of additives and different preservatives or things of that nature in school meals. And also to be able to create more culturally relevant meals. So there were, I think, a lot of reasons why local providers were kind of wanting to move in a different direction away from like, the heat and serve model that it sounds like I grew up with, Andrew, you grew up with, and I don't, I don't know about you, but that was definitely my experience in school.

Dr. Val: I mean I really did enjoy the school pizza as weird as it was.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: So did I. It's funny, I still, I still remember like the square shaped sausage pizza and being very into it

Dr. Val: That’s it. It was delicious. [laughing]

Andrew: Yep,

Dr. Val: So I hear your passion around the environmental justice issue. Talk to me about the money involved.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: So the Rockefeller Foundation did a study that came out a couple years ago that looked just at our current program and the way that it exists and found that even if you're just looking at like a reduction in poverty and like some improved health indicators the current program costs us about $19 billion of federal funding every year. But creates about another $19 billion in like net value when you take more of this true cost accounting approach. And they found that if we were to make a couple changes, so maximizing participation, improving some of the nutritional parameters and sourcing more environmentally sustainable meals we could increase the net value by at least another $10 billion annually. So there's a lot that we can do in terms of like, you know, making these programs a lot better for our kids and our communities, and also make them, I think, better you know, even from this like fiscal conservative kind of argument.

But instead I think that a lot of times we're seeing too many politicians thinking about this as a real ideological issue instead of actually thinking of it from this like broader economic standpoint let alone like a social justice standpoint. And even when you look at like, school finances the school meal program actually has its own separate budget fund. And that fund is supposed to be maintained as like a, not-for-profit program. So any kind of revenue gets invested back into the program, but in most places, they're expected to not draw from any of the district general education funds. Like, they're sort of seen as very distinct.

And so that puts a real pressure on them where you know, their only sources of revenue are the reimbursements that they get from the federal government. So every meal that's served is reimbursed a certain amount for a free meal. Certain amount for a reduced price meal and a certain amount for a kind of full price paid meal. And so, the schools get that along with any money that families might be paying for the meals that are served at reduced price or full price.

Andrew: So even if you're paying full price for lunch, there is still additional money coming in from the government. Like in my mind, when I pay the $2.50 for my kids to eat lunch, that's covering the cost of the lunch. But you're saying that there's still a government reimbursement on top of the $2.50 that I pay in for that. So my participation is not only putting $2.50 into the coffers of the school meal program, but is also generating additional revenue beyond that.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yes. So every school meal as long as the school is participating in the National Breakfast and Lunch Programs, it's subsidized to some extent. It's just the degree to which it's subsidized is different. So that's why participation really matters because you really only have the revenue that you're bringing in and it's pretty limited. So how you actually grow the amount of money that you have to spend is through economies of scale. So like having high participation means that you have more money to kind of spread across like certain fixed costs. So then maybe you actually have a little bit more money to invest in improving ingredients or paying workers better wages or having more benefit level positions.

And I get especially concerned, like, so for instance, I live in Madison, Wisconsin and we have had a pretty consistent, around 40% participation rate in the meal program for the last decade. And when you look at the numbers a little bit more closely, it becomes really worrisome because not, not only do you have a lot of the families who don't qualify for free or reduced meals, not participating, but you also have a huge chunk of people who actually qualify for free or reduced meals who aren't participating. So that's something that I think got me really interested in this question of participation especially when we see like the barrier of cost not being there anymore, like, the meals are served free and the school district's really doing a lot to improve meal quality when we still don't see really high participation numbers. That makes me think that there's something deeper going on in terms of like a broader sort of cultural issue around lack, lack of participation.

Dr. Val: I'm curious about your thoughts on the student lunch debt, as that has been in the news lately, and you know, communities are galvanizing to pay off students’ lunch debt, if people are getting reimbursed, why are we, why are we pressing these young people and not letting 'em graduate?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, school lunch debt, I think is really, it's a hard thing because the school nutrition department is expected, like I said, to be financially self-sustaining. So like, rarely do they want to be in a position where they're having to chase families down or like invoke these kinds of shaming practices but they're expected, you know, from the school administration to be financially self-sustaining.

Dr. Val: Aaahhh.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: So there are certain states that have passed legislation saying you can't do these different lunch shaming practices, but then they don't necessarily provide funding, in order to offset that. So, that's where we see a lot of these like efforts from local charities or individuals like to try to raise money to pay off the unpaid meal debt. So I, I think it's, it's really an artifact of us not having a universal free school meal program. And I think it's a really unsustainable thing in terms of asking for this to be something that individuals or like private sort, philanthropic efforts or are trying to fill.

And I think that the lunch debt piece, it really should be something that, you know, we're figuring out some immediate term solutions to. And I think that can be a community level thing, but I think it can't stop there. In terms of people feeling like that's how we should be addressing it. We're gonna need a certain level of momentum in terms of getting free school meals for all passed at the state level across like a certain range of states. And then I think we'll reach a tipping point where it could become an overall federal program. But I think we're still in this like building phase.

Andrew: So this is really why we need folks to not only participate in the program, but also kind of get involved on the advocacy side, right? Where, where should people start with that?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: So a lot of states have what's called a Healthy School Meals for All coalition. So I would definitely encourage people to look at that and get involved because I think we need a lot of advocacy around really reorganizing what these programs look like. And to kind of connect this to what the Panthers were doing with the school breakfast program. You know, they realized that the USDA was not meeting the needs of their, you know, children, their community is that they weren't getting access to free meals and they were being stigmatized. And they recognized not only the political potential of school meals, but also the need for people to eat together and experience food and care in the dignified way that really is affirming for them and perhaps even invokes like joy, right?

So I think that the federal government actually saw the success of the Panthers school breakfast program and viewed it actually as pretty politically threatening in that it was drawing a lot of people into learning about the Panthers and seeing like, you know, the power that can be involved in community self-determination around what your social programs look like. But I think that we're at this point now where we can view this as a public resource, as like a community good, a public good. And we should be investing in our programs to ensure that not only are kids getting the best nutrition that they can get, but also that they actually like eating their meals and that it's a positive experience.

Cuz there's a whole lot of, I think like social and emotional things that can happen like at lunchtime too. And these should also be programs where people can actually, you know, earn a livable wage and live in their communities. And right now, because of the model that we have that is so, I think focused on like cheapness and efficiency and delivery of the program we are really creating a program that just is not delivering on its full potential. So I think I'm really passionate about school meals because I see it as a way to really, be creating better quality jobs, particularly for women who work in these programs. This is a job that exists really widely and is really undervalued. And I think that it's important to be doing things like scratch cooking, not only because it allows us to provide higher quality meals, but it also allows us to start providing full time jobs for a lot more workers. Because if you think about it, like when you have a lot of like, heat and serve style meals, you basically have outsourced a lot of the work of cooking. And so then you have a lot of people who you're hiring and maybe three to five hour positions that don't have benefits.

And so it's like cheaper for the school nutrition program, but it's really in a lot of ways hard to keep people in those positions. And so I think the scratch cooking thing is something that I see as really important, not only for the students, but also for improving job quality. And I think is also like one of the big things that makes I think more parents and caregivers feel good about their kids like eating in the program is having like more freshly prepared food. So I'm a huge advocate for scratch cooking and farm to school programs. I think that's a big thing. I'd encourage listeners to try to support if possible.

Andrew: When I hear you say advocate for more like farm to school programs, school gardens and whatever… my mind immediately goes to those things existing in more privileged schools. Like, the likelihood of that happening is in an already privileged school. Have you, do you have thoughts of sort of how we advocate for more universal access to those sorts of things? Because I can imagine a scenario where that becomes another kind of selling point that gives more sort of cultural cache to an already privileged concentrating school to say, well, not only do we have five specials every week, and not only is our computer lab all brand new IMac’s, but we also do this farm to to table program where, you don't even have to cook lunch because our school meals are already at organic. So you should choose our school over that school down the block that doesn't have those things.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah, I really believe that community partnerships are important, but we can't be expecting community partnerships to be where a lot of the farm to school efforts are coming from because that's just not really as sustainable for non-profits to be like playing that role. I do some work internationally comparative in terms of looking at school meal programs and I think the ones that really are best in terms of issues of equity surrounding the quality of food and also access to food education are universal and actually have real ties to their curriculum at the national level so that it becomes not this thing where it's like, oh yes, this individual school might have gotten some resources to do, you know, a school garden and some curriculum with their students. So I think that you know, there's a real need for us to have like food education integrated into curriculum if we really wanna reach all students. I think that that's very important. But I also think that there are real opportunities to just be intentional about what change over time looks like.

So I use sometimes the example of Minneapolis Public Schools where they probably about 12ish years ago started this transition process where they had a central kitchen that produced little pre-packed meals and they've been doing so since the 1970s and Bertam Weber who's a really awesome food service director that I've worked with over the years and really respect, he was like, I think we really need to be doing better for our community. And he really built community support and was able to have, at first a pilot program transitioning some schools to onsite cooking and then to really get administration buy-in to have a longer term plan to convert all the schools to scratch cooking. And instead of saying like, oh, well, we can't ever move away from the central kitchen model because that would be unfair, like for some schools to get access to scratch cooking first. Which kind of keeps you stuck in this, like, worst case like, you know, status quo model.

I think, have been really intentional about saying, well, what we're doing is we're expanding this program out to six schools every year because that's what we can handle sustainably. And just being transparent and communicating like what the end goal is and what the process is to get there. And I think that something like that can go a long way where, you know, sure there might still be a fair amount of frustrations around like, I really wish my kids' school was earlier, you know, in that timeline. But I think that there is you know, a certain level of understanding about like, okay, we understand like what the longer term vision is and how we're gonna get there.

So I think that there is some concern for sure about like, when we're relying only on volunteers or local nonprofits like certain inequities just being like reproduced or even deepened. But I like to try to talk with people a little bit more broadly about if you're interested in trying to really improve school meals through more of this collective effort, like, what unique skills do you bring to that, that might be useful and how do you like partner together? Cuz I think it's a, it's a complex system that I think a lot of people don't fully understand. So I do think that there's a few organizations including the Chef Ann Foundation and Food Corps that have pretty good advocacy toolkits online that I think help people really understand just what the system is and for particular kinds of things that you might be interested in changing. Like who would even be like the appropriate target to talk to.

Andrew: Yeah, but I mean, it sounds like the first step is participation that, that the more people who are participating, the more likely any of those changes are going to happen.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yes, and I think that that's true from an economic standpoint, but also from like a cultural and political will standpoint.

Andrew: Right. Yep. So speaking of creating that, uh, you know, political and cultural will, obviously like the more folks who are opting into this program, the better, but that also can, can feel like a big leap for some of the reasons we've talked about. Is there a way to kind of, you know, ease into this?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: One thing that I really try to encourage people to think about is, you know, maybe you do wanna pack like a certain portion of your child's lunch. Well, you can actually still participate if the school has, for instance, a salad bar, or maybe they just have like some sides that you would like. Because most schools use something called offer versus serve, which means you have to have on offer all five of the components of a school meal which are fluid milk, vegetable, fruit, protein, and grain. But for it to count as a reimbursable meal, you actually only have to take three of those components.

So a kid could, you know, maybe bring their own entree or whatever and just take salad fruit and milk. And that would actually count as a reimbursable meal. So that's something that I've seen some districts try to experiment with in terms of trying to increase participation, but also like meet the variety of reasons that some families might still be reluctant to participate as they're on this journey of trying to increase participation and improve quality and sort of launch that like virtuous cycle of improvement.

And then I guess the last thing I would say in terms of support is just even if people aren't like super thrilled about what the school meal program looks like rather than opting out, I think if, if people are able to find even just a couple days of the week or month that they feel comfortable participating and starting there, that's helpful for building a culture of participation and bringing more revenue into the program and is also something that I think, you know, can save a few minutes if you're not packing a lunch. So maybe that's the few minutes that you then can use for state or federal advocacy to improve the program for everyone.

Andrew: I love it.

Dr. Val: Oh man. You know, it's interesting. Andrew and I were just talking about, you know, when our age, when our kids age out, what does our advocacy look like? You have me hooked. Okay…

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Oh, good.

Dr. Val: I am in. Can you gimme like three books to start? I need three book recommendations so I can just get fully and what should I read immediately?

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: So, I think for school food, I wrote a book that came out a couple years ago called The Labor of Lunch, Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools. So I would recommend my book for people who like, want to have a more like feminist understanding or even like feminist critique of school food systems and their relationship to how we think about care or why we might need to think about school meals as part of our national care infrastructure. And in my book I also talk a lot about different programs around the country that are investing in change and why we also really need to center like the needs of workers in that conversation. Janet Poppendieck wrote a book called Free for All: Fixing School Food in America that came out. I think in 2010… 2011. And she provides a really good primer of like what our federal programs look like and why. And then Susan Levine and her book School Lunch Politics is much more of like a political, like legal history, but talks a lot about that right to lunch movement that I mentioned.

Dr. Val: It’s been a pleasure and mind blowing. Thank you.

Dr. Jennifer Gaddis: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both for the work that you do with your podcast. Y'all have a lot of really great conversations on it. So thanks for the work that you're doing.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

Andrew: Thanks. Yeah.

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Andrew: So Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: I'm left with a lot of thoughts. Once my kids age out, I do think school lunch, food justice for our young people is something that I am going to stay involved in. I don't know that I think enough about where my public dollars go. I just, I don't know that I think enough about it. I see like big things like educators, and city services, and county services, and roads, but I hadn't really thought about school lunch.

Andrew: $19 billion a year. Like it's a lot of money.

Dr. Val: Right, right. And I had not thought at all about how opting out of that would be an equity issue for many of our students. So I'm just curious, what, what do your kids do for lunch right now?

Andrew: My kids have eaten school lunch ever since it was available. And I would love to say that that was like an equity, justice minded decision on my part, and it was not, it was entirely a lazy, um, minded decision on my part where I was like, I can't, so when my oldest was in a little private pre-k before we moved here, I had to pack our lunch every day and it was…. It was too much. And so as soon as there was a school lunch available, I figured if there's like kids who it's good enough for, why wouldn't it be good enough for my kids and they'll eat it. How about your kids?

Dr. Val: Nice. Interesting. We go back to pre-K and just probably some things I hadn't really thought of until we just started unpacking this right now. But I think I associated good parenting with providing like the best, healthiest food for my children.

Andrew: Mmmmm, Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Val: Since they've been born right? Since, you know, even when my, my kids were little and breastfeeding, like making sure I ate the right thing so that they got the most nutrients and like, feeding them was really something that weighed on me as a parent and, um, and I think in my mind, that probably equated to making sure like they had the healthiest lunch available. Now their daycare had a fantastic cook and a kitchen, and they ate great hot meals that had, you know, they had some variety. They were like spoiled from the jump with really good food. And I would ask 'em, I was like, ‘Hey, do you want me to make your lunch?’ And they were like, no, we're eating school lunch. Like they had, they wanted no parts of this turkey sandwich that I was throwing together. Right. And they ate school lunch, um, until the pandemic.

Andrew: So even after they left preschool and went into the public school system…

Dr. Val: They wanted school lunch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they ate it up until the pandemic. And then since the pandemic, they've been packing their lunch. And I, I haven't talked to them about like what school lunch looks like now, and I'm wondering about their own ideas now that they're older, right. Middle school and high school, and if there's different social pressures to eat or not eat lunch, I'm, you know, I'm not quite sure, but this conversation certainly made me think a lot about it.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So I think that that piece of like what it means to be a good parent is to make your kids’ lunch. Like that's real. For sure.

Dr. Val: You gotta leave a note and everything, a different note every day about how much I love you. [Andrew laughs]

Andrew: But then, yeah, I mean, it's like, so, so with my oldest. In classic, you know, two kid story, like with my oldest, everything she ate, we made from scratch, you know, as soon as she started on solid food we're hardcore about right, exposing her to the right flavors and the right nutrients. And then, you know, the second one was, you know, sucking down fruit roll ups by the time she was six months old or something. And I don't know how kind of the shift happened for me. I think there's definitely something gendered in that, like the pressures of being a dad are not the same, like in that I was in charge of their food. The pressures on a dad are not the same as the pressures on a mom.

Dr. Val: I felt so much pressure, I can't even tell. Like it is still like, have you eaten? Like feeding them feels like one of my chief responsibilities as a parent.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I do think that piece, and I, you know, we touched on it a little bit in the conversation with Dr. Gaddis, but food is just such like an important thing that we do as people. I mean like obviously like to stay alive, we have to eat, but there's so much cultural importance and significance around food. You know, breaking bread together is a real thing, right? Like they, like that brings people closer together. And when thinking about the kind of opportunities that exist in a school lunchroom, is that kind of cultural piece, right? If we can create a spot where everybody feels like they can show up and eat the meal together, like how much closer does that bring people together? And right now we have the system that actually is like, you know, sort of reifying these divisions that already exist because you've got school meals that are for a certain type of people and homemade meals that are for a different type of people. And it's like, you know, those kind of divisions get amplified in the lunchroom where there is this potential to maybe do something different.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I thought a lot about the idea that the cafeteria is a place of inclusivity and how you hear a lot of stories and anecdotes of children of immigrants who do bring their lunch to school and then get picked on because it is not right, is not the typical American cold sandwich meat between two pieces of bread. It's really awesome food. Right, right. It's really awesome food. Right.

Andrew: It’s not a Lunchable. [both laugh]

Dr. Val: And so the idea of the cafeteria and that place where you break bread together as a true opportunity to build community, really seems like a missed opportunity. And one again that I had not thought about until now because I think the main narratives around school lunch that I thought about like right off the bat was, people get picked on for the lunches that they bring, that we know that happens specifically to folks of color, maybe children of immigrants, children of diverse cultural backgrounds, right? And so really imagining the cafeteria is not only a learning place, right? How can we learn about the different foods in our world and the different cultures of our world? Like I imagine that being a really joyful cafeteria as an elementary school student, where we do get to explore different flavors and different foods and different cultures, and the importance of that in our own communities. That seems like a really amazing time at lunch. And yet, because of financial reasons, we are often pushed to what's efficient, what's quick, what's low skill.

Andrew: Yeah. And I think, I think there's also this kind of like stigma, I mean, I do think the fact that kind of today's parents came of age right after the Reagan administration cuts 25% from the school budget, that like our version of school meals is not what kids are eating today. This thing that, that Dr. Gaddis points out that like, you know, studies show that the school lunch is actually more nutritious now than what most people bring from home. I mean, that's certainly not what was in my mind about school lunch. You know, I mean, I kind of was feeling like I was sacrificing my kids just out of my own laziness, right? Was like, well, they're gonna have crappy food, but I don't have it in me to make them anything better, cuz I don't love them enough, but… [laughing]

Dr. Val: Well, I did a little, I did a little scan and, I am confident my kids eat like one piece of fruit and 6,000 milligrams of sodium for lunch each day. I don't think that's good. And I think the fruit is typically in a cup or something that, you know, like.

Andrew: That’s like mostly sugar. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Right. They, I might get some grapes and an orange in there. So in terms of nutrition, I know that what they can get at school will be better. I wanna touch on lunch debt. And what to do and I think, I think I was very surprised that most of these food service departments have to be financially sustainable on their own, and that the only revenue that they have, is what they bring in and or get reimbursed. And if people don't participate in the lunch program, there's really no way to sustain this program. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: So, it was really helpful to listen to Dr. Gaddis talk about like how this is all connected to a larger system that I hadn't thought about. Like I think I always blame the school for like, just take care of the kids lunch. What's the big deal?

Andrew: Or the school lunch program. Yeah. Like I would've put a lot of blame on the school lunch program. Like, why are we, you know, nickeling and diming kids for the $1.75 or whatever. Like, that's ridiculous. But actually, right, like they're, they're in a bind because they have to be financially balanced and, and if you have 20 million kids who are opting out of the program.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: That's revenue that is not going to be able to subsidize those kids who are on the cusp. Those kids who maybe get reduced price lunch but can't, can't necessarily pay that all the time. For those kids who are just over the threshold but can't actually pay for the two, I mean, $2.50 a day actually starts to add up. Particularly if you have multiple kids.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And, again, I love and hate these aha’s because I'm like, gosh, I should know this already. I should be thinking about this already. And it forces me to unpack some biases or, you know, preconceived notions that I might have. And I always love our food service workers. Like, so it wasn't about love and respect for humanity, but never really thought about their skill or their working conditions. Like I just never thought about it. And so the idea that this is also a labor issue that impacts women more often than not, and women of color more often than not, it really feels like we should all be up in arms for the people who feed our kids. Cuz chef Andre says, food is love. Right? So you are feeding our kids, you are creating an experience where they are nourished in the day. And as a mom, that like means everything to me.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. You talk about like who, who's got their finger on the pulse of the student body the best it is often the cafeteria workers. You know, in that food space is where there's so much potential for love and for care. And there's certainly again, like potential for kids to get so much of that from the lunchroom staff.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And you know, I love responding to love and care with more love and care, right? So this feels like something that really feels important to get involved in, and at least have conversations about.

Andrew: Yeah. I guess again, this sort of untapped potential, right? Is that it's not actually more expensive to scratch cook food that is locally grown, that's, you know, better for the environment, better for kids, and creates, you know, more sustainable long-term jobs. We like shift the money that we're spending $19 billion a year, but if we can shift it away from technology, away from food and into labor, like everybody wins in that scenario. And so now you've got cooking that's happening in schools and now you've got, you know, cafeteria workers who are developing skills that can be useful in other places. Instead of having a three hour shift, you've got an eight hour shift. There's like so much potential to do that if we, like you said, respond to the love and care that they give our kids with love and care.

Dr. Val: Yeah. You know, I shouldn't be surprised Andrew, cuz you get me in these conversations all the time. But I think I'm often surprised when White supremacy shows up.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Like, I shouldn't be surprised that this desire to have cafeterias and fresh meals, you know, started in the suburbs, right? And, and to make sure that every kid got fed. And then as the global majority increases in our schools, the importance of that shifts.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, right this is this pattern that keeps playing out and you know, I know there are those places where I had not anticipated this to show up in the school lunch conversation, and yet here we are yet again. Right? We have Brown v Board, we have segregation academies, we have the Fair Housing Act, and we have racially restricted covenants. We have the school lunch program and federal rules about who can have access to it. We say this is gonna be a public good. And like Heather McGee says, now, you know, now we drain our public pools. Now instead of having fresh cooked meals cooked by people who are well paid, we now have, volume feeding industry coming in and making hot lunches that are nearly inedible because we think we can squeeze a few bucks out of it.

Dr. Val: Yeah. It's sad. It's sad on many levels because I do think what continues to happen is, our young people are getting messages about their value, the value of people who serve and care for them during the day. I think as a general public, I could just speak for myself, um, not feeling fully informed about all of this, like this, I would have not known any of this had we not had this conversation today.

Andrew: Right. Yeah. Me neither.

Dr. Val: I think that's intentional, right? Like we're not talking enough about it you know, broadly, but cuz if people are talking about it, thank you Dr. Gaddis. And so, making sure that we, we understand where our dollars are going, understand how the people who are, working in our schools and the resources that they have access to, that's not just about maybe the latest tech or maybe the best field trip, but something as fundamental as the meals that are in front of our young people.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I can't help but seeing this, the school lunch question as really like a microcosm of the broader public education question, right? Like the people with the most privilege are the most likely to opt out, but this, this idea that in order for the system to actually improve, in order for school lunches to better serve everybody, we need everybody to participate in it. And I think that is also true in the sort of public education sphere more broadly, that we need people to opt into public education. We need people to opt into school lunches so that these systems can really thrive, both so that you know, the, the financial piece of it. So there's more money coming in to actually serve kids. But then also the messages that that says about like, should politicians care about this? Should people be up in arms about this or not? Does a politician need to worry about the school lunch program?

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Right now, probably not, right? Because the people with the most sort of outsized political influence are often opting out of the system altogether.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I would love just to, and I don't have the answer, I like it when we don't have the answer and we try to talk about something about the, the broader cultural issue around the lack of participation. What are your ideas around lack of participation? Like why don't families participate?

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I think that that stigma is real. I mean, maybe there was a little bit of sort of social justice in, in my decision to have my kids, have the school meals. It was mostly about laziness but, but I do think there was some piece of like, well if these meals are good enough for kids who are getting them for free, like, why wouldn't they be good enough for my kids? But I had to push back on the narrative that I had learned up until that point, you know, which is basically that school lunch is for people who can't afford to bring their own lunch. And so I do think there is like a social stigma around that, both around like who, who doesn't, who doesn't participate in getting hot lunch. And then also like what the quality of the food is. And I think that's just like, I, I was, I was misled, you know, like, I don't know where exactly that came from, but certainly like the, the smog that we're swimming in told me that the food is not good for you and it's for poor kids.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I agree. I was also misled and I don't know where it came from. Right. You just, I have no evidence…

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: …to support that belief and I think that's, that's why, you know, asking listeners to keep an open mind about this episode was really important because, I think one of the wonderful things that we can do is continue to have conversations about it. I think, and you know, in addition to the stigma and the shame and maybe the narrative around school lunch, I do understand that timing might be difficult, right? Like you have to wait in the long line probably cuz they're understaffed probably cuz they can't get anybody to work there because why would I work there for three hours and so I understand parents, wanting their kid to have time to eat lunch and certainly if there's allergies and just understanding what is being served because there has been recent legislation, you know, in our, our lifetime that has improved the quality of lunch. And so not working from our pre-established assumptions or associations. It's another lesson I learned. Goodness gracious. I'm just growing so much.

Andrew: I know, right? I know, right? I mean it does, yeah. It does feel like yet another place where, if we can opt out of the worst parts of the system, then the system doesn't change.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: You know? And so the, the more we can opt in, which I think sets us up nicely here for action steps here at the end of the episode. Val, what are you taking away as an action step?

Dr. Val: Yeah. First thing I wanna do is have a conversation with my young people. I don't even know how they function at lunch, and I would love to hear about the things that are being served. They probably might not even know because they probably go sit down and try to get their premium friend seating, you know…

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: And so really just have a conversation with them about lunch and how it connects to food justice and the importance of understanding how our public dollars can support real justice efforts. I think this conversation always starts at home. Right? Other things that I definitely wanna do is to continue to read about this issue that always feels important to educate myself…

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: …around what the issues are. You know, and certainly advocate in other ways, locally. To make sure that this conversation does not get forgotten.

Andrew: Yeah. I share all those. I think I'm gonna continue to send my kids to school without a lunch but I'm just gonna feel a little better about it. Rather than feeling some guilt or shame around, uh, not loving them enough to make them lunch. I really like the idea of this like, offered versus served that, you know, you can take three things… you can, you can send your kid to school, have them get milk and a piece of fruit and a vegetable. Still send them with your sandwich and your note of love. Because I do think, I mean, like there, there's a real sort of care element that I, that I don't, I don't think we should downplay or ignore in providing food for your kids. But like send them with those things and still let them get some lunch and then, and you know, even if it's just a couple days a week or a couple of days a month that the kid is getting the full school lunch or just getting some pieces of it that actually the system is benefited by that. I think that's a really, um, you know, easy action step for folks to take.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: And then the other thing I'm thinking about is just the, you know, Dr. Gaddis talked about if you're not making your kid lunch, that gives you a few more minutes to advocate for these things, like scratch cooking and, I don't even really know where to start, but I think certainly, you know, in thinking about school board elections and thinking about, mayoral candidates, like whatever's going on, like trying to hold our elected officials accountable for moving in this direction because I think it's easy to say, well, oh, you know, it's too expensive, or, oh, that's just something that only certain communities can have. But actually, you know what Dr. Gaddis’ research shows and other research shows is that the costs are about the same. That you can actually have scratch cooking. You can actually have jobs that are sustainable for cafeteria workers, that is creating better food that more people enjoy and it doesn't end up costing you more. It doesn't end up costing the school more. And certainly if we look broadly like, society level, we are saving so much by having healthier kids who are eating better food.

Dr. Val: That's certainly a way we can push for justice in our schools.

Andrew: Those are great action steps. Another action step. As always, you can take, if you appreciate this content. If you appreciate the work that we do here is to help us buy lunch by going to patreon.com/integratedschools and throwing us a few dollars every month. We would be very grateful for your support.

Dr. Val: That's right. And as always, we want you to listen to this episode, share this episode, talk about what you're learning. This is important work that really can lead to justice in our schools, that we can all get behind.

Andrew: Absolutely Val, as always, it is a pleasure and an honor to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time, friend.