It’s been the practice for some years, but now peanuts and their derivatives are formally banished from food served in Arlington public-school cafeterias.
Cafeterias now must “provide exclusively peanut-free food,” an Arlington Public Schools policy implementation procedure (PIP) mandates.
Another PIP revision provides that students with severe allergies of any kind can now give their schools a doctor’s note, “and accommodations will be made to ensure that they have access to food that is safe for them to eat.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 13 students is affected by at least one serious food allergy. That works out to about two students in a typical classroom setting, or several dozen in a cafeteria setting.
The CDC has developed voluntary guidelines for educational institutions to address the issue of student allergies.
While most allergic reactions “are mild and resolve without problems,” CDC documents state, peanut allergies are of specific concern because more than half the fatal or near-fatal allergic reactions reported involve them.
Because PIPs are staff documents, revisions are provided to School Board members for information, but there is no formal vote on them.
Another pending change — noting that food offerings should be culturally sensitive — would be applied to the school system’s food and nutrition policy.
That policy, which is up for a standard five-year review, is determined by the Board and was presented to them by staff as an information item in December. It is likely to be voted on during the Board’s Jan. 16 meeting.
The current policy states that school-system nutrition programs will be “environmentally sound” and “sensitive to current nutrition and health information.” The reference to cultural sensitivity will be added to that sentence.
Books Closed on Alice West Fleet, Dorothy Hamm Projects: Five years after it opened to students, the financial books have closed on the Alice West Fleet Elementary School construction project.
The $60.4 million project was one of two to be closed out in recent months, said Andy Hawkins, the school system’s assistant superintendent for finance and management services.
The school was constructed on a surface parking lot adjacent to Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Most students from what then was Patrick Henry Elementary moved there; Patrick Henry was transformed into the Montessori Public School of Arlington.
The other closed-out project, Hawkins told School Board members at their December meeting, was the $44.1 million renovation to Dorothy Hamm Middle School, which also opened to students during the 2019-20 school year.
The facility previously had served as home to the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, and before that was Stratford Middle School.
Multi-year lags are not unusual between the effective completion of a major capital project and the final financial closeout.
