Dinner is now on the menu in nearly 200 California schools

You’ve heard about free school lunches and breakfasts, but how about school suppers? In California, dinners are now being served to students at almost 200 schools, EdSource Extra reports. These California schools are joining a new federally-funded effort to provide three meals a day to children from low-income families who also attend after-school programs across the state. When Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act near the end of 2010, it allowed after-school programs to receive federal funding for supper at the same rate provided for free and reduced-price school lunches. To be eligible, the after-school program must have an educational component, such as homework tutoring or a class on health and nutrition, and at least half of students served must qualify for free or reduced-price meals…

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Schools say ‘no way’ to Congress OK for pizza as vegetable

A week after Congress backtracked on some key components of landmark school nutrition legislation, nutrition advocates are saying that the battle for healthy school food needs to be fought district by district, along the lines of what several California districts are already doing, EdSource Extra reports. Last year, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, which required school meals to have more whole grains, fruits and vegetables and less salt and fewer calories in an effort to combat childhood obesity and the early onset of diabetes in children. But last week a Senate and House conference committee, under pressure from some food industry lobbyists, blocked implementation of some of the new regulations…

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How higher-performing schools made it onto the ‘low-achieving’ list

Several dozen elementary schools with scores higher than the state’s target for academic success have been placed on a list of 1,000 “low-achieving schools.” Being on the list gives parents the right to remove their children and enroll them in higher-performing schools anywhere in the state, EdSource Extra reports. The designation of these schools as “low achieving” is the unintended outcome of the Open Enrollment Act, which was meant to give parents at some of the state’s lowest-performing schools greater choice as to where to enroll their children. Until passage of the law, transferring to schools in another district was exceedingly difficult for most children, achievable only through a hard-to-get inter-district transfer. This law, which went into effect in April 2010, requires districts to send letters to parents notifying them of the right to transfer to a higher-performing school in another district, based on its Academic Performance Index (API)…

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