I'm actually excited about the changes! We have a six grade fundraiser that has been the same for eight years! NOW we can really encourage them to sell anything but chocolate....don't get me wrong, I love chocolate, big fan of it, need some right now, but they need something different.
At our meeting last night we had someone from district explain the law to us and they gave us a copy. It is somewhat strict. It definitely will make it harder to fundraise. They expect within two years that we are not to have any candy at all in the catalog. Which is silly since we cant control at home intake of food. We have 2 ice cream socials a year for our membership drive and we are going to have a hard time with that.
There isnt much to do to get around it. He did say the what they want is that there is more nutrional food availiable then unnutritional. Give kids the choice at bake sales, festivals, and what not. As well as portion control.
Well if you need a copy of the guidelines, I would request one from the district office and maybe have someone come to one of your meetings to explain it better. It is not wriitten in stone yet but by july it will be.
A big thanks to each of you who responded to my question. This policy is indeed the Local Wellness Policy (Section 204 of Public Law 108-265). I do believe that our school district may be a bit over zealous in regard to limiting certain fundraising companies and we will continue to look into this and make sure we inform you of our results. We currently use a catalog company in which only a very small amount of food is even offered for purchase.
We got ours a couple of months ago. It will not take effect until September. No candy,pop,chips to be sold in or on school property by ANYONE. Big changes are indeed coming. And yes it is a federal mandate. A lot of schools get money from the Department of Agriculture. I think it is so kids will start eating healthier. In some districts it has started already. I'll keep you posted from my end.
