Translating…
The school year is coming to a close but on the end note of the school year is the question, are your children spending all day thirsty? Being thirsty or hungry are two of the most uncomfortable feelings in life. It is hardly fair to allow our children to feel thirsty during the day. Considering the length of time children spend in the school building every day, these children need to be getting plenty of water to drink while they are there.
Step into any school building across the nation and you will find water fountains and drink machines, in the classroom there might be a sink but never a cup dispenser. Getting a drink during class time may actually be impossible. Most children are encouraged to get a drink and go to the restroom either before or after recess, but probably not both. When lunch time rolls around, students have a choice between orange juice and milk, water simply isn’t on the menu. If students prefer water, they must get up during their lunch, go to the fountain get their drink and return to finish eating. The truth of the matter is that may not even be allowed by the lunch monitors.
Children as a general rule need to have between 6 to 8 eight ounce glasses of water each day for their basic health needs. Because they spend the majority of their day at school they need to be drinking at least half of that amount while they are at school. That means they should be drinking 3-4 glasses of water at school, the problem seems to be having cups or glasses to drink it out of. Almost all of the schools across the country only provide drinking fountains and drink machines, there are no cups available. If they are limited to a drinking fountain, there is literally no way they are getting even close to enough water.
Consider that there is always a line at the fountain when the students are allowed to get drinks and the teachers are encouraging them to hurry and allow others a chance to drink as well. It would be pretty hard to get a full 8 ounces of water in a drink from a fountain.
Nutrition advocates believe school children’s access to water is a national problem the federal government is only just beginning to deal with. In fact 15% of middle school aged children consume enough water during their day at school. This means that 85% of the school children don’t get enough water, no wonder we have childhood obesity problems in our country. Instead they are consuming soda and other sugary drinks out of the machines around school when they should be reaching for a cup of water. The main problem here is that the school makes money off the soda machines and they say their budgets don’t allow for the purchase of cups for water, or the filter systems that would be needed to guarantee the water was clean, great tasting water. Let’s face it; we don’t drink water if it doesn’t taste good. That would be why water fountains that don’t give cold water that tastes good don’t get used. Water fountains aren’t replaced real often and may be in disrepair or even not working altogether.
Last year Michelle Obama continued with her “Let’s Move!” campaign to target childhood obesity and at the same time “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” attempted to show American’s what their children are eating and drinking at school. Jamie Oliver targeted the flavored milk and wanted parents to be aware that it contains more sugar than a can of pop. But if that is all the kids have to choose from for drinks with lunch, they are going to choose what tastes good.
Following these campaigns, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 to improve school nutrition in the National School Lunch Program. This legislation requires that clean water be easily available in school, but it’s not clear if the new rules go far enough to address the lack of hydration. Schools simply have to provide water in student eating areas, which water fountains qualify for. The only thing that the legislation perhaps will change is the number of fountains available for the number of students enrolled in each school. With 30-minute mealtimes, there may need to be more fountains available.
Especially if students are expected to get up from their lunch go to the fountain to get a drink and return to their lunch. A long line would mean students wouldn’t be able to finish lunch, so let’s face it; students won’t be drinking water either.
Perhaps the simplest solution would be to simply provide cups to drink water out of while at lunch and even after recesses. But educators admit that too many of America’s largest school districts elect not to provide cups. Chicago public schools, Miami-Dade public schools, Newark public schools, Atlanta public schools, Clark County school district in Nevada, all do not provide cups to their students. Some schools will have cups available but students must ask for them, there again making it difficult to get a drink of water that is worth more than just a slurp. Educators say that providing cups can get expensive and take too much of their already dwindling school budgets. But really should a simple drink of water come down to money?
If we go to a restaurant and purchase a meal, we can ask for a glass of water instead of also purchasing a soda. Typically a glass of water is provided upon request for free. Why is it that a restaurant can provide this service for free but our public schools can’t? When schools serve children milk or juice for lunch, they receive money from the federal government reimbursing them for that milk. But water is not reimbursable either from the tap or from bottles. School officials say that if the federal government would let them offer water as part of a reimbursable meal, then the children would have water as a menu option.
However, because they don’t get money back for it, water is not offered. It would be the healthiest drink available, should also be the cheapest drink available, but we still can’t offer it. Students admit that they would gladly drink water if it was more available, but they aren’t going to walk to the water fountain twice or three times during a lunch period to get a drink while they eat. They simply don’t have that kind of time available for lunch.
Perhaps water has always been insufficiently available at school, but with our current status of childhood obesity, schools have a unique and special responsibility to help students make good choices. Lifestyles have changed in recent years as has our environment. Sweetened beverages are cheap and easily available in machines and convenience stores everywhere. Schools have changed some of their machines to have bottles of water in them, but often it is flavored and perhaps even sweetened water. These machines provide schools with funding for their extracurricular activities. If they were to offer water available for free at lunch and anytime in between, students would certainly spend less money in the machines. This would mean schools would have to find alternative funding sources for their activity funds. It is far easier to simply claim that cups are too expensive and leave the machines and fountains to be the source for water for the students. Then no one has to come up with new funding ideas, and everything remains the same. Bottom line the students remain dehydrated.
The UCLA / RAND Center for Adolescent Health Promotion, a CDC funded prevention research program has been testing a way to get children to drink more water at meal time. It is called a water intervention. It’s a 5 week program that includes installing a water filter in the school, filling 5 gallon jugs, chilling them overnight, placing them in the lunch room with cups during lunch periods. This program was done in the Los Angeles school district in 5 schools free to the district. Students actually gravitated towards the water and filled their cups up before and after lunch. The water was very popular and lots of students participated. In fact some of the students said it changed what they chose to drink every day. Now that the program has ended however, so has the availability of water. The school district says it cannot afford to provide the water and the cups at its estimated cost of $ 1.8 million to $ 2.3 million each year.
It is true that is a lot of money, but there are also a lot of children in those districts.
Perhaps the best answer is for parents to provide the water for their own children. Schools can’t afford it but our children can’t afford to go without it. Our obesity epidemic is proof of that. As parent’s we need to be ensuring our children get enough water to drink. We don’t go without water at home, so we shouldn’t go without it at work or school. Simply filling a water bottle at home and tucking in our children’s back pack as they walk out the door would be a step in the right direction.
Technology has improved many things in our lives including drinking water. There are home water treatment systems on the market today that do an incredible job treating the water we drink. Raising a glass of water that smells and tastes like chlorine isn’t very appealing. Having the proper water treatment system can change not only the smell of the water but the taste as well. There are also systems that allow people to select the flavor of water they prefer. It is possible to have the best tasting water imaginable without buying water in a bottle. Simply installing a great drinking water system can change everything about drinking water.
Water fountains are fine for a sip now and then, but they usually don’t have great tasting water. At home we don’t have fountains for a reason; They aren’t a great way to get a decent drink.