how willing are schools to make cafeterias peanut-free?

hi meadow, first of all, I believe what the FDA means by accomodating is that they have to serve your child a peanut free lunch. I also got excited when I saw that line, but not what I thought it was [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/frown.gif[/img] .

My school still serves pb. However, my ds is not airborne (as far as we know, knock on wood) allergic, or I would've fought to make the whole school peanut free.

Does your allergist agree that he is airborne allergic or is he one of those that believes airborne reactions dont exist? If he acknowleges them, than I think a convincing letter from him would go a long way.

My ds was sitting in his classroom with his aide eating because he was too nervous eating in the cafeteria. Now he is trying it just so he has some time to socialize with the other kids. Its very hard, I hope things work out for you. Keep us posted.

Meadow,

We spoke with the Director for Food Services for our school district, and gained agreement for them to completely eliminate peanut butter/peanut products from the school lunch menu.

It turned out that only about 5% of the kids purchase their lunches anyway at our school. A far more difficult challenge for us for next year's planning (our child will be in 1st grade next year) is dealing with all the PB&J brought in from home.

Anyway, I didn't post the actual letter we received from her, but reference it (as Exhibit 6) in my early post last summer from our 504 planning efforts.

[url="http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/Forum7/HTML/001046.html"]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/Forum7/HTML/001046.html[/url]

Momma2boys,

Does your son feel left out? I worry about this a lot with my daughter. It might be more of a worry for me than her, I'm not sure at this point.

Our doctor is a believer in airborne allergies, but he doesn't believe an airborne reaction would be fatal. His main concern is ingestion, but when he wrote a letter to our preschool he did mention casual airborne contact would result in a reaction. He did not elaborate. He is very accomodating and willing to help us out - thank goodness.

I am also worried about a backlash from parents sending pbj sandwiches in children's lunches. Somewhere on this site I read about the reaction of parents in a California school. I am hoping to make my daughter's school experience as "normal" as possible.

Thanks so much for the reply!!!
Meadow

Nutternomore,

Was it a struggle for you to convince Food Services to agree to eliminate peanut and by-products from the menu?

Thanks so much,
Meadow

meadow, ya know, I dont really think he felt left out. He actually liked it. But when asked who he wanted to invite from his class to his bday party he said no one. We really felt he just had no time to socialize and make friends.

Youre right, it bothers us more than them [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/smile.gif[/img]

Hi! I work in a school and have a pa child. I really thinks it all depends on the principal and/or county you are dealing with. I do not know of an peanut free elementary schools in our area, but know they are very careful about how they clean, etc. I know we are talking about an airborne allergy which is a whole different thing.
It is a sticky subject , but for schools , yes they can claim they are free of peanuts, but how do they reinforce it if other children still bring it in their lunches- that is the difficult one probably for principals. Good question when you talk to them.
One thing I have see which kills me is at a school that claims to be very careful, they serve peanuts at all the staff meetings which are in the library. This may be over the top but I even worry about that- just takes contact with one peanut on the floor. AAAAggg!
Sorry I have very little answers, but I do work in a schoiol so if you have any specific questions I'd be glad to help-. Good luck!

Meadow,

No, I don't think it was too difficult. My wife had an initial meeting (or phone call) with the Director for about 30 minutes, and may have followed up with e-mailing some information.

She found, surprisingly, that the Director was already pretty literate on the subject, so she didn't have to do as much educating.

Within the food services industry, it seems as though there has been some degree of educational effort put forth (due to the legal implications), so perhaps you'll find that to be one of your easier tasks???

Nuttermore, I'd be interested in hearing how you approach the issue of kids bringing PB into the cafeteria next year. We are in a similar situation. Our PA son is in kindergarten at a private school. This year, for the first time, PB was eliminated from the hot lunch program (which is just twice a week), the three K classrooms are peanut-free since the K kids eat in their rooms, and there is a peanut-free table for kids who eat in the lunchroom (grades 1-5). We will try having our son at that table next year, but since he's never been in a room of kids eating PB, I have many worries about it. He is contact sensitive, but I really don't know about airborne sensitivity. I hope that having him at that table, plus hand-wiping by the kids in his grade (at least) will be good enough.

Perhaps it would help to at least ask the families of kids in his grade to try to avoid sending in PB, to reduce the risk to him. There are kids in other grades with PA, but not as severe (or proactive), and it's been quite a saga getting as far as we have with developing a reasonable food allergy policy.

Yonit,

We are in similar positions, although I think you followed my thread from September where we had just a [i]little[/i] initial backlash in our public school. [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/eek.gif[/img]

Anyway, our first step will be for DW to "shadow" first grade for a day. That will give us a good indication as to potential areas of concern from both a facilities/logistics perspective for the entire day (not just cafeteria issues), so that we can hit the ground running with 504 planning...

Nutternomore: I would like to know what food service company your school district uses. I am planning to speak to our director of food service and we also have another meeting scheduled with the school as we work on obtaining a nut free status...Do you suggest talking to the principal first or food service first??

SF,

I don't know if we have the answer to that question, but I'll check w/DW to see if she knows.

We had spoken with the Dir. of Food Services [i]before[/i] speaking with the principal, but that was primarily driven by the fact that the principal initially wouldn't make any time for us.

Do you know if anything is currently done by Food Services at any of the schools in your district?

It's hard to comment about which route to take without knowing more specifics of your situation. On the one hand, by speaking w/Food Services first, and then presenting that info to the 504 team, we were able to accelerate the process. However, our 504 planning process was initially [b]very contentious.[/b] Also, we wanted the info directly from the horse's mouth....

If you have a good relationship w/the principal and have a good partnership re:504 planning, then for the sake of the relationship, it might make more sense to run it through him/her.

Tough call....

meadow,

Our school allows children to bring any food from home (including PB), so I don't know if my situation is helpful to you. The school does the usual letter home explaining PA and requesting that children not bring it. It comes anyway, of course.

Our food service (food, menu planning, employees) is subcontracted. Our school district has used Chartwells, a division of Compass Foods, for several years. Chartwell's has been great and has essentially provided a completely nut-free lunch service at our school. It's a big company and you can check them out at: [url="http://www.chartwells-usa.com/"]http://www.chartwells-usa.com/[/url]

[This message has been edited by Gail W (edited February 10, 2004).]

SF,

I checked w/DW, and it never came up in the course of discussion with the Food Service Director at the time.

So we don't know if our school district has a contract with a food service provider. My wife seems to think that they don't - that they handle everything in-house, but we're just not sure...

reraising.

Just on a positive note. My daughter's school made the caffeteria peanut/nut free without me even asking. they just felt it was the right thing to do since there are now several children at the school with an allergy. A notice went home in our initial newsletter stating anytime there were peanut/nut items listed on the menu it would be substituted at our school. I work at the school and have not heard any backlash.

Linda

Rilira: very interesting, thanks for sharing! How many students attend your school?

Our elementary school has 360+ students and it seems that they are not yet going to ban nuts in the cafeteria brought from home. Looks like we might win the battle on what they actually sell in the cafeteria, but not allowing nut products from home will be our next goal.

Sounds like you are very fortuneate, please keep us posted on how things are going at your school.