Another interesting item in school news. ExPrez Bill Clinton has brokered a deal with the soft drinks industry to pull soda pop out of the nation’s schools by 2009-10.
Here’s a little Duluth backstory to this:
Last night I was talking to a former high school principal and he mentioned this in regards to our efforts to raise money for the Duluth Public Schools Endowment.
While he and I were with the District we were always scrambling for funds. Former Board member Pati Rolf, a strong advocate for healthy living, once pushed to have soda pop vending machines removed from the schools and for good reason. Soda pop (along with other high sugar and high fat foods) is leading to an epidemic of obesity in children with a resultant spike in diabetes, heart disease etc, etc, etc.
Some people may shrug this off as liberal whining but there’s no question that our government subsidized agricultural and food processing industries are plying us with food so that we are stuffing it down our faces like never before.
The talk of banning vending machines raised the hackles of all three of our high school principals. They discourage in the strongest terms from doing this. All our high schools have arrangements with soft drinks suppliers to split soda sales with the schools. The School Board’s concern about our children’s health threatened their ability to give children after school programs. What a two edged sword! (For crying out loud speech and debate has all but disappeared in the Duluth Schools!)
Our local bottler Bernicks set up a ten-year deal to supply soda to the schools in return for $30,000 to help furnish and equip Public School Stadium. How can we renege on that deal?
Time will tell what will happen locally or even nationally but I can’t help but think this is a good and worthwhile effort. Believe it or not when I went to High School we only had an apple and milk vending machine if memory serves me correctly. But then, my memory isn’t what it used to be.
