Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Junk food sales fatten local school coffers

Faced with record rates of high cholesterol, obesity and even diabetes in their students, dozens of school districts nationwide are considering banning junk food and soda machines from campuses.

But Clark County isn't one of them, despite the fact that several studies show that Las Vegas Valley children are among the unhealthiest in the country.

Instead, Clark County school administrators see a bigger role for vending machines in the schools and see on-campus vending as a way to provide much-needed income to schools -- funds that are unlikely to come from anywhere else.

"We use our vending machine dollars for clubs, activities, even paint to touch up walls," Las Vegas High School Principal Barry Gunderson said. "We rely on that money for all of the things the district has said it can no longer pay for."

Lawmakers in California are moving ahead with plans to make their schools junk food-free zones. The Oakland School District, which has 52,000 students, has already replaced soda with fruit juice and banned candy and other unhealthy snacks. Texas officials are also considering a statewide ban on junk food in schools.

But in Clark County, the vending machines are a necessity, not a luxury, school district officials say. The machines provide between $400,000 and $800,000 a year for the district's 30 high schools alone, where the bulk of the vending machines on schools are located, administrators said. The revenue, which could reach well over $1 million a year, is only expected to grow.

The number of Clark County students who turn to soda and snack food vending machines as a source of nutrition -- albeit a small one -- is expected to climb.

When the new school year begins in August, students at the district's urban high schools will no longer be allowed to leave campus during their lunch periods. The decision to close the campuses came after a lunchtime wreck that claimed the lives of two Las Vegas High School students last month.

All of the high schools that will be closed have cafeterias, but the facilities aren't big enough to handle the crowds. The district's food services department is scrambling to figure out how it will manage to feed the thousands of students who once hopped into their cars and headed to the fast-food drive-thrus. School administrators believe that many of those students will likely feed their money into the vending machines, choosing Gatorade or Doritos over waiting in the cafeteria line.

To ease the crunch on cafeterias, many of the district's schools have also switched from traditional lunch periods of 30 to 35 minutes in favor of so-called "nutrition breaks." The idea is to move smaller groups of students through the cafeterias to avoid overcrowding.

Students are encouraged to bolt a bite in the hallways during these 15-minute intervals between classes, purchasing pizza or burgers from roving food carts or heading to the vending machines.

Critics say it's a poor way to treat students.

"We already know most students skip breakfast, which makes lunch even more important," said Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association. "We're telling the kids to eat anything fast instead of giving them the opportunity to eat well."

Some parents say they've come to accept on-campus vending as a fact of life on campuses with thousands of students.

"I hate the amount of junk food at schools, but I also realize things like fresh fruits and vegetables don't really lend themselves to vending machines," said Bernadine Anthony, whose children attend schools in the district's northwest region. "Plus, I know the money from the machines pay for a lot of the extras."

District officials are discussing ways to add more healthy choices to the vending machines but concede economics will have to play a role in the selection. As one principal described it, "You can lead a kid to a vending machine, but you can't make them buy a granola bar."

Attempts by state lawmakers during the last legislative session to set higher nutritional standards for on-campus vending failed. Assemblywoman Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, said she hasn't given up on the measure.

Statewide, pediatricians and school nurses are reporting more cases of obesity, high cholesterol and even type 2 diabetes in youth in Southern Nevada. The findings are mirrored nationwide, Cegavske said.

"Students are a captive audience, which is why it's more important than ever to get nutritious choices into those machines," Cegavske said. "If we're going to improve the health of our children in this state we must look at what they're eating at school."

Clark County's 266 campuses have about 4,000 vending machines, according to district officials. Because each school negotiates its own vending contract and handles the profits, the total take isn't known, said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of finance for the district. Estimates range from $1,500 to $3,000 a month at the district's larger campuses.

With nearly a quarter-million students, Clark County has the nation's sixth-largest school district.

A committee has been set up to consider centralizing vending services so that schools can take advantage of "economy of scale," Rulffes said. Instead of hundreds of individual contracts, a central office might be able to negotiate bigger and better deals on vending services, Rulffes said.

Principal Kenneth Bedrosian of Cimarron-Memorial High School in Las Vegas, a member of the committee, said so far there haven't been enough strong arguments made in favor of centralizing campus vending.

"We've heard presentations from Coca-Cola Co. and Pepsi Co. representatives, and they both told us it may not even be realistic to have one contract when we have so many schools," Bedrosian said.

Clark County Superintendent Carlos Garcia said while he hasn't ruled out centralizing vending services entirely, for now he expects the contracts to remain in the hands of individual principals.

Garcia has asked for some pilot studies to offer healthier choices for students at a lower price. The studies are running this year in some high schools.

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