USDA Cuts Program That Allowed Schools to Buy Local Food
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that helped schools buy food from local farms, in a move that one food-service director called “devastating.”
The USDA’s $660 million Local Food for Schools program, which was started under President Joe Biden in 2021, was canceled for 2025, according to the School Nutrition Association, which criticized the cuts.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment. An agency spokesperson told Politico that the programs “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”
The program sought to bring local produce to schools and child-care facilities, giving schools the opportunities to buy fresh foods and use smaller producers rather than rely on large corporations.
“This was devastating,” said Nicole Melia, the food-service director for the Norristown district in Pennsylvania. “We have been really working on establishing a lot of resources and supports to help schools connect with local farmers. This was a slap in the face to all the work we’ve done.”
The program was part of a larger $1.5 billion effort from the USDA to enhance the school meal program following supply-chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal was to help the bottom lines of school lunch programs that typically operate on tight margins, as well as producers that were struggling after the pandemic forced restaurant closures.
Educators said the program helped bring fresh produce and variety into the cafeteria that they haven’t always been able to offer.
“These critical school nutrition programs operate on paper-thin margins and, at this time, with increased costs,” said Tara Thomas, the government-affairs manager for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “Schools need more resources and funding to cover the cost of providing these healthy meals. Any reduction in funding will have a negative impact on schools if you increase the cost of these programs at all.”
Congress is also considering broader cuts to the National School Lunch Program. Those cuts would follow years in which access to free school meals has flourished.
The Shift to Daylight Saving Time Piles Onto Students’ Sleep Woes, Experts Find
Yep, it happened 10 days ago, but its effects will linger for some time.
Daylight saving time bowed into 48 states on March 9, providing an extra hour of daylight daily and kicking off the start of warmer weather and increasingly longer days.
But health experts warn that, especially in the short term, the sudden leap forward by an hour can disrupt students’ sleep patterns, many of which are already compromised.
“Sleep deprivation in kids is a huge issue,” said Lynn Nelson, the president-elect of the National Association of School Nurses. “Around 35 percent of our school-age kids don’t get enough sleep. And there are well-documented impacts this has on physical health, mental health, and academic success.”
And daylight saving time makes sleep deprivation worse, say health experts.
Over the years, numerous critics of daylight saving time have attempted to put a stop to it.
In December, then President-elect Donald Trump called to eliminate daylight saving time, referring to it as costly and inconvenient. But he later indicated that he likely wouldn’t move forward with the idea, citing insufficient public interest.
Daylight saving time is akin to setting the body’s natural 24-hour clock ahead by an hour. It should come as no surprise, then, that many people feel less alert in the morning immediately after the clocks shift ahead.
That’s bad news for adolescents, 80 percent of whom don’t get enough sleep on any given night anyway, according to a 2024 poll from the National Sleep Foundation. In that same poll, nearly three-quarters of teenagers surveyed reported that insufficient sleep had a negative effect on their emotional wellbeing. Multiple studies bear that out.
Teens aren’t the only students likely to struggle with getting enough sleep.
A 2023 study examining sleep health disparities among children found a link between poverty and poor sleep health in young children. Notably, those researchers observed that consistently healthy sleep patterns drive children’s cognitive development.
Federal Judge Won’t Stop Immigration Agents From Making Arrests on School Campuses
A federal judge won’t be halting immigration authorities from coming onto school campuses to make arrests.
The Denver school district had challenged the new rule from the Trump administration, which reverses a Biden-era policy limiting arrests at schools.
In his March 7 ruling, U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico said the Denver district failed to prove that a drop in attendance was due to the administration’s new policy.
It wasn’t clear how much of the fear surrounding possible enforcement actions in schools was really the result of the new rules as opposed to broader concerns about increased immigration actions, he said.
The new policy has not yet been acted on, according to the Council of the Great City Schools.
Besides a drop in attendance, Denver officials say it has had to divert resources to respond to fear among students and families over the lifting of longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools, churches, and other sensitive locations.
“This includes providing mental health support to students, diverting administrator attention from academics to immigration issues, and assisting students who miss school to catch up,” lawyers for the district said in their request to block the new rules.
Under the previous “sensitive locations” guidance issued in 2021, officers were generally required to get approval for any enforcement operations at those locations, although exceptions were allowed for matters like national security. The change announced in January scrapped that guidance and emphasized that field agents should use “common sense” and “discretion” to conduct immigration-enforcement operations.
Domenico, an appointee of President Donald Trump, noted that the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement later issued a directive to agents that arrests at sensitive places like schools still had to be approved by supervisors. The fear over the new rules, as well as the belief that the old rules provided protection to schools, both seem to be “overstated,” Domenico said.
Arrests at schools have been rare. ICE data show only two immigration arrests made in schools between 2018 and 2020 along with 18 arrests near schools.
Utah to Prohibit Fluoride in Public Drinking Water
Utah is banning fluoride in public drinking water, the first of the 50 states to do so, though more are expected to follow.
The legislation bars cities and communities from deciding whether to add the mineral to their water systems—despite widespread opposition from dentists and national health organizations.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Government researchers have found that community water fluoridation prevents about 25 percent of tooth decay.
“We’ve got tried and true evidence of the safety and efficacy of this public health initiative,” said American Dental Association President Brad Kessler. Cavities could start emerging in children within months or years of Utah stopping fluoridation, he said.
A ban in Utah, Kessler added, could have a domino effect with other legislatures being encouraged to follow suit with fluoride bans in their states.
The ban comes weeks after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has expressed skepticism about water fluoridation, was sworn into office.
Already, some cities across the country have gotten rid of fluoride from their water, and other municipalities are considering doing the same. A few months ago, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to kids’ intellectual development.
It’s rare to find high levels of fluoridation in water, according to the National Institutes of Health, and “virtually impossible” to get a toxic dose of fluoride from water with standard levels of the mineral.
Chicago District Becomes Latest With Breached Data
Add Chicago to the list of public school districts whose online data have been compromised.
Information from hundreds of thousands of current and former students was exposed, according to Chicago district officials. In a letter to parents this month, school officials said there was no evidence so far suggesting any information had been misused.
The breach did not include Social Security numbers, financial information, or health data. The FBI and the Illinois attorney general are investigating the incident.
Late last year, an unauthorized third party carried out a cyberattack that accessed district data on a server owned by one of its technology vendors. District officials learned in February that student data had been accessed.
That information included students’ names, dates of birth, gender, student identification numbers, and Medicaid identification numbers and dates of eligibility for those enrolled in the federal program. The Medicaid data cannot be used to obtain Social Security or open bank accounts, credit lines, or credit cards.
Although the investigation is ongoing, the district believes all current and former students dating back to the 2017-18 school year were affected. Staff data were not breached.
The district “is deeply committed to the security of student information, and we expect the same level of care and commitment from our vendors,” said spokesman Norman Fleming in the letter to parents. “Please know that the protection of your child’s personal information is a top priority, and we sincerely regret any concern or inconvenience that this matter may cause you.”
In the past few years, hackers successfully targeted a New York City public school district vendor, jeopardizing personal information for some 820,000 current and former students.
Fairfax County, Va., Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New Haven, Conn., were among other districts, both large and small, subjected to breaches.
