Implementing Federal School Food Policy at the Local Level: Reshaping the School Food Landscape to Advance Educational Equity

• In Event: 56.038 - Education Policy and Social Issues: The Balancing Act of Implementing Federal School Food Policy

Abstract

Background and Objectives

This paper presents research on “California Thursdays” (CT) as a case of federal school food policy that was translated into meaningful actions and outcomes at the local level that advanced educational equity. CT is a school food initiative created in 2013 by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in partnership with the Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL), an “intermediary organization” (Honig, 2004). As of 2016, CT has gone to scale across 71 other districts in California and advances educational equity by increasing students’ access to local, fresh, and healthy school meals.
Conceptual Framework
This study utilized Datnow, Mehan, & Hubbard’s (2002) conceptual frame of ‘educational reform as a co-constructed process’ (p. 11). Co-construction engages the complex and dynamic nature of policy implementation by attending to the interrelationship between contexts, i.e., the ways that co-construction generates outcomes through an interplay between ‘policies, people, and places’ (Honig, 2006). Co-construction also focuses on the way that the implementation process “…unfolds in unpredictable and nonlinear ways through the interaction of individuals in different settings….” (Datnow, et al., 2002, p. 11).
Methods
This study asks: What factors and enabling conditions allowed CT to scale across 71 other districts in California? To answer this question data was drawn from a three-year (2013-2016) ethnographic case study of OUSD’s implementation of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Data include relevant documents (e.g. internal reports, media articles, etc.), transcripts from 13 key informant interviews, field notes from participant observation, and emails from a CT listserv – an online forum for districts participating in the implementation of CT.
Findings
This research finds that CT went to scale because:
1. Districts engaged in collective implementation of CT through a process whereby local level actors engaged in small, manageable tasks, or co-constructed scalable, transformative implementation practices. The practices served as important drivers of programmatic transformation in each district implementing CT and created school food systems change across California.
2. The Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL) served as an intermediary organization that used a “collective impact model” to recruit, organize, and support districts across California implementing CT.
3. CEL created a listserv for communication and coordinated efforts between CEL and the CT network (participating districts), which enabled the co-construction of CT across districts through the sharing of information and best practices. The listserv also allowed CEL to cultivate internal positive discourse by reframing how food service workers understood their work, e.g., referring to them as “change agents” when communicating with the districts.
4. CEL trademarked and branded CT to create consistency of standards for CT meals and for marketing purposes; and, cultivated external positive discourse through marketing efforts that reframed school food to students, families, and communities in which CT is being implemented.
Scholarly Contribution
An analysis of CT going to scale as an outcome of the implementation of federal school food policy at the local level contributes important lessons regarding the role and use of education policy and schools in advancing educational equity.

Author

• Christyna Serrano, University of California - Berkeley