Douglas County School Cafeterias Meeting Tough, New Nutrition Standards

By Peggy Reich, Food Service Director

All cafeterias are meeting tough new federal nutrition standards for school meals, ensuring that meals are healthy and well-balanced and provide students all the nutrition they need to succeed at school. Now is a great time to think about encouraging your children to continue to choose school lunch!

School meals offer students milk, fruits and vegetables, proteins and grains, and they must meet strict limits on saturated fat and portion size. Starting in School Year 2012-2013, school lunches will meet additional standards requiring:

• Age-appropriate calorie limits
• Larger servings of vegetables and fruits (students must take at least one serving of produce)
• A wider variety of vegetables, including dark green and red/orange vegetables and legumes
• Fat-free or 1 percent milk (flavored milk must be fat-free)
• More whole grains
• And less sodium

We’re always working to offer Douglas County students healthier and tastier choices. Each year at Student Forums, we ask students to taste test and rate foods that we are considering for upcoming menus. Each month we feature Georgia grown produce, and at a few elementary schools we are delighted to have daily free fresh fruit and vegetable snacks through a grant for the students.

School meals are a great value and a huge convenience for busy families too!

*Adult prices are based upon food portions equivalent to high school student meals.

We receive federal reimbursement to offset the true cost for producing meals for one breakfast and one lunch per day per student served. No federal monies can be used to subsidize the price of adult or second meals.

For your convenience, we offer an on-line meal payment system, www.parentonline.net.

Immediate Benefits:

• Prepay by using your Visa or MasterCard
• Web site available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• View account balances and student purchase history
• Receive e-mail notice when account balance is low
• End lost or stolen money
• Set-up hassle-free automatic payments
• Accessible from any internet ready computer
• Highly secure
• Toll free phone and e-mail customer support
• 5 percent convenience fee per transaction, $20 minimum that can be split among siblings

Parents can apply for free or reduced priced meals by filling out a family application that is sent home to you. Or for faster turnaround, you may apply on-line at https://frapplications.douglas.k12.ga.us beginning in mid-July.

We look forward to welcoming your children to the cafeteria this fall. To find out more about Douglas County School District’s healthy school meals, see our other links at www.douglas.k12.ga.us under Food Services. To get the facts about school meals on a national level, visit www.TrayTalk.org.