by Mary Macrae ‘14

In October of 2012, an organization of parents of MCPS students called the Real Food for Kids-Montgomery (RFKM) was formed to encourage and promote healthy, whole and nutritious food in all MCPS schools. Co-founders Karen Devitt and Lindsey Parsons were concerned about the current food served in schools and wanted a change.

So far the group has made strides towards these goals of higher nutrition and promotion of healthy lifestyles for students. One of RFKM’s most recent and significant achievements includes the elimination of strawberry milk in all MCPS schools.

“I believe RFKM was effective in working to ban strawberry milk because it established a far-reaching base of members across the schools and it surveyed its members to help identify priorities” said Samantha Meklir, a member of the group. “The removal of strawberry milk was a clear priority among members and also a reasonable request to put forth to MCPS.  Again, both RFKM and MCPS share the goal of doing what’s best for our kids and RFKM provided a voice to articulate a clear step in how this could happen by working to ban the red-dyed strawberry milk.

“RFKM’s ever growing membership is helping create change within MCPS and has as a result attracted local attention from newspapers and broadcast news.

“We are really proud of the numbers of parents we have reached and the structure that we have created.  Our membership includes parents in 120 of MCPS’ 202 schools.  Our members are advocating for change at the school level, educating other parents about the food, reaching out to the PTA’s, and talking to the principals about the desire for better school food created,” saidDevitt.

Another one of RFKM key goals was to help reduce the availability of certain sugary drinks and snacks. As of late RFKM has been able to get MCPS to delay turning on soda and candy machines until 30 minutes after the end of the school day. “Soda is basically poison, and liquid calories are one of the most dangerous and most suspected in the current crisis of childhood obesity and diabetes. An educational institution shouldn’t be selling it to children in its care,” said Parsons.

These achievements are just some of the goals RFKM wishes to accomplish. Through collaboration and compromise with MCPS, the group hopes to further promote rules and regulations that will improve student’s health and well- being.

“We have a lot of things in the works” said Devitt. “We’re working on some statewide legislation for more transparency in school food.  We’re working on getting students more involved – possibly in creating a film about food in our schools with interviews with students.  We’re beginning to branch out to social media more to spread the word to as many people as we can. We’re hoping to expand our membership to every school in MCPS by the end of this school year in June of 2014.”