The Clark County School District: Money, Ethnicity, & Food

September 5, 2008

The other day I went with my sister to her son’s school to pick up the list of items each parent must* purchase. Mind you, this is a public elementary school. The list is things like toilet paper, erasers, etc. The schools can’t afford to buy their own toilet paper. So the parents have to buy it.

Anyway, while we were there we grabbed two things: a fact sheet about Vegas schools and the school lunch menu. The fact sheet was interesting. For example:

The Clark County School District is the fifth largest school district in the United States:
• 2007-08 enrollment – 308,783 students
• 2006-07 enrollment – 302,763 students
• 2005-06 enrollment – 291,510 students
• 2004-05 enrollment – 280,834 students
• 2003-04 enrollment – 268,357 students

The rapid population growth partially explains the lack of resources such as toilet paper. But another piece of the puzzle is the fact that the school district is majority funded by sales tax:

The preliminary general operating fund budget for the 2007-08 school year is $2,146 billion and the per pupil expenditure is $6,827. The budget is funded as follows:
• 39.3% - Local sales tax
• 27.7% - Property tax
• 28.5% - State support
• 4.5% - Government Services Tax / federal support / other

Just guessing, but I think that since people are spending less on non-essentials that they’re sales taxes are contributing less to the schools and thus, the schools can’t afford toilet paper.

Also interesting:

Student Ethnic Distribution:
• Hispanic . . . . . . . . . . . . 123,236 . . . . . . . . 39.9%
• White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111,484 . . . . . . . . 36.1%
• African American . . . . . . 43,047 . . . . . . . . 13.9%
• Asian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28,595 . . . . . . . . . 9.3%
• Native American . . . . . . . . 2,421 . . . . . . . . . 0.8%

Categorizing and counting people by race or ethnicity is troubling because many people are multiple races, many don’t want to identify with any particular group, and the choices are limited or categories are too broad. However, I still think this distribution is interesting.

And it makes me excited about Vegas. I want to raise my kids, when I have them, in a diverse, urban setting. I think kids who grow up in diverse, urban environments like San Francisco, LA, New York, Chicago, etc. tend to have a better appreciation and acceptance of cultural difference. They get exposed to more of a variety and they get to think further ‘outside the box.’ It’s just my opinion, but I’d rather raise kids where their minds get stimulated than raise kids isolated in a rural area.

My mom thought differently and moved out of LA to a small town up the coast when she had kids. She said she did it because she wanted us to be exposed to more natural beauty, and indeed, I have a much better appreciation for nature than many of my urban cousins. But it also meant that most of the people I saw were the same color as me, we all dressed the same, and we shared many of the same values. In some ways, it made me feel less acceptable in the few ways that I was different. Like I’ve said before, I was the only vegetarian child I knew (other than my sister). I don’t want my kids to feel isolated like that.

Also of note: The lunch menu was pathetic. For example:

Monday - pizza
Tuesday - cheeseburger
Wednesday - chicken patty sandwich
Thursday - chili cheese dog
Friday - pizza

FYI, the Cheeseburger has 552 calories, 1037 milligrams of sodium and 21 grams of fat. The Chili Cheese Dog has 1029 mg of sodium and 13 grams of fat.

The vegetarian/vegan option was peanut butter and jelly sandwich… every single day.

So, the meat-eating kids get fatty, salty, unhealthy foods. (If you’re going to eat meat, at least don’t combine it with tons of cheese, oil, and salt. And DON’T eat it every single day for every single meal.) At least the veggie kids had an option. There was no option when I was a kid. But the vegetarian kids get a relatively healthy meal of PB&J without variety at all. (Some schools don’t have a vegan option, only a vegetarian option of grilled cheese.)

OK, sure. That’s nutritious. No wonder my sister packs my nephew’s lunches everyday.

—

*strongly encouraged, but not legally mandated

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Miscellaneous 

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Comments

5 Responses to “The Clark County School District: Money, Ethnicity, & Food”

  1. Debie Baxter on September 5th, 2008 7:33 pm

    My son wouldn’t eat school lunches during 4 years of public school and 9 at a Christian school. He would occasionally ask for money for pizza day since they ordered out from a popular pizza delivery place, but that was it. He even realized in kindergarten that on salad bar day, the 2 dressing choices were “gross” :buttermilk ranch and another (can’t recall) of the same vein . ….sigh…

    During his junior year his health class visited my natural food store for a field trip. I did my best to cram as much info about healthy choices as I could into one hour.

    About ten years back I taught Sunday School to the youth class at our church. Prior to taking over I sat in to observe the teaching style, etc. of the outgoing teacher. Teens are always hungry, so it was customary to serve them a snack. The guy (wonderful caring teacher by the way) brought Doritos the first week and…. are you sitting down, Elaine?… junior whoppers the second. I was thinking, “Oh boy, things are gonna change”.
    Soooo, now ,I’m the teacher and they’re eating trail mix, fruit, protein shakes, carob cupcakes, and ya know what, they’re gobbling it up just like when they had the junk food. They really loved experimenting and trying new things.
    Well, I’ll end this ramble, I’m in a good mood….turning…cough, cough, 54 tomorrow and we are having friends over for a bon fire to celebrate.

  2. Stentor on September 5th, 2008 11:01 pm

    I never bought school lunch my whole 12 years (except for a few days when my group of friends had a coordinated trail-mix-eating thing). I always brought my lunch … and it was always PB&J. (Not that I’m condoning the school’s policy.)

  3. Tracy on September 6th, 2008 9:34 am

    Illinois’ public schools are funded by property taxes, so you can imagine the wide disparity between the education the wealthy receive and the education the poor receive. A reverend/city councilman urged Chicago Public School kids to boycott the first day of school this week, and he put them on buses to symbolically register at one of the best high schools in the state. (While I don’t advocate kids skipping school, he did attract more attention to the issue.)

  4. Little Old Lady on September 6th, 2008 12:49 pm

    I grew up in a small industrial blue-collar city in Pennsylvania and went to public school there in the 50s and very early 60s. The school system was nothing fancy, for sure. But the school system provided absolutely all school supplies, books, field trips, etc., at no expense whatsoever to the students. The only expense was the high school activity ticket, where for a nominal fee you received the student newspaper, yearbook, admission to school dances and sports events, and so forth. The only other expense was bus fare to away games. My elementary school had a full-time janitor who actually cleaned (and kept the lavatories supplied with soap and paper), a full-time librarian, and a full-time nurse. I do not understand why a working class city could provide all that (which I consider a minimum), but today all public schools that I know of expect the students to provide a long list of supplies and the teachers also to supply things like art materials out of their own pockets. No library/librarian, a part-time school nurse if that, and if the New Orleans public school that Edward attended is at all typical, no janitorial service to speak of. What happened?

    As for school lunches, when I was a girl, pizza hadn’t yet hit the American table. In my town the only way you could get it was to join the Victor Emmanuel society, and that pizza was quite different from what you get at Papa John’s. Cheeseburgers and french fries were rare treats for special occasions and vacations. Elementary schools did not have food service. Kids ate breakfast at home and walked home for lunch (that meant four walks a day). Junior and senior high cafeterias served only the federal class A lunch, no other choice. The class A lunch consisted of protein, veg, and starch (occasionally all served in a sandwich) with fruit and whole white milk. That was it. If you didn’t want to eat that, you brought a bag lunch. My town was in the PA Dutch country, and the recipes tended toward PA Dutch cooking, heavy to say the least. I doubt if anyone back then was vegan/vegetarian (or had even heard of such a thing), but if any were, the class A ,lunch provided two veggies (one starchy) and a fruit every day.

    BTW I thought peanut butter was now banished from school premises everywhere due to the prevalence of life-threatening peanut allergies.

  5. drymartini on September 7th, 2008 1:46 pm

    Public school will die a slow death at different places. charter schools seem to be the way to go.

1 Trackbacks to “The Clark County School District: Money, Ethnicity, & Food”

  1. Dear National School Lunch Program Administrators : Elaine Vigneault on September 20th, 2008 4:56 pm

    [...] I was inspired by reading this PCRM alert as well as by reading my nephew’s school lunch menu a few weeks ago. [...]

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