Statement of Mrs. Rhonda Barnes, Washington food-service worker, at the USDA listening session in San Francisco, California. August 6, 2008.

My name is Rhonda Barnes and I am here today on behalf of Washington state public school food service workers and the Campaign for Quality Services.

The campaign is a joint project of the Service Employees International Union and UNITE-HERE. Together, our unions represent more than 2 million families in the United States.

Across the country our two unions also collectively represent more than ten thousand food service workers in school cafeterias. Many of us are parents of public school children - and all of us are taxpayers.

We work with communities across the country to raise standards in school cafeterias. And I am here today to call for a greater investment in child nutrition programs.

I work in the Moxee Elementary School in Washington State's East Valley School District. In this building we have over 500 students, ranging from kindergarten through 3rd grade.

What I love best about my job is being around the children, they are a fun and really a great group of kids.

East Valley District is split between middle class farm families and recent immigrants so we do have a significant number of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals.

We don't see a lot of obesity but we do see underweight children - you can tell because their clothes are hanging off of them, they're not the same size as their peers - and many of them do not perform as well in the classroom.

We sometimes see children in the morning who are hungry, we try to push them along to eat breakfast.

Free and reduced students can eat breakfast for free but many are not able to take advantage of this meal because they come to school late and then it is no longer available to them in the cafeteria. I think that serving breakfast in the classroom is a double-edged sword, obviously some parents who feed their children breakfast might see it as a distraction that can take away from their own child's education but we do need to come up with some solutions.

It's also a bone of contention for me that some of the breakfasts are not as nutritious as they could be. Sometimes we serve donuts and milk - this does not work. I think there needs to be higher nutritional standards for breakfasts served at school.

I also work as a para-educator, so I see a lot of these kids in the classroom, and after lunch their performance does improve so I know how important these meals are to these kids' ability to learn.

In my classroom we also supply a snack and I cover that cost out of my own paycheck. I do this because I know it helps the children stay focused and learn more.

I think funding for school meals has got to be increased. What we receive in reimbursements is simply not enough. We are supposed to be running a self-supporting school food service and the food service director tells us the revenue coming in is not covering our expenses. At one point several years ago, the financial pressure was so great that our school cafeteria was simply closed down and the school stopped serving lunch. We do not want to see this happen again.

I believe more money is also needed so we can serve healthier meals. Everybody knows processed foods that are high in sugar and fat can contribute to diabetes and obesity. These foods are often cheaper but they are not healthy. The $2.47 per meal the federal government now pays to subsidize free school lunches is not enough.

We need to invest in fresher, healthier foods and a good place to start would be higher standards for USDA donated commodities. I believe the donated commodities that are provided to school districts need to be nutritionally balanced; often times what is available is not what we need most. At my school, we do find ourselves in situations where we're thinking, how we will ever use this much peanut butter - maybe we should just turn it into a dessert?

Finally, I think we need to promote greater diversity in the foods we serve in school. I think too often we are serving chicken nuggets and mac n'cheese. I realize small children are not always that open to trying new kinds of foods but we find that with some encouragement, they are willing to take a risk and eat something they've never eaten before.

Thank-you for this opportunity to discuss the school meal program. I believe that if parents, workers, students, administrators and the community work together, we can create a meal program that meets high standards for nutrition and creates a solid foundation for learning. Our children deserve no less. Thank-you.