As part of CCSD Regulation R-5157, a student wellness policy has been enforced to help benefit the health and wellness of all students.

This policy outlines what foods can and cannot be sold on school grounds. Entrees cannot exceed 350 calories, while snacks cannot be over 200 calories. A list of approved foods can be found here. This change has led to adjustments in fundraising and at-lunch sales.

“You have challenges when you’ve been selling similar items for several years in the student store and have to mostly change your inventory,” Assistant Principal Cameron Roehm said. “Then you gotta know what to buy. You don’t want to buy a bunch of one thing and it doesn’t sell or it expires. That hurts the school because then we’re losing money for our students for reward programs. ”

Despite these challenges, Roehm said that the school’s revenue has managed to remain somewhat steady.

“It’s hurting our clubs and activities because they’re being more…careful of what they can sell…” Roehm said. “We did the spam musubi, where they actually made their samples smaller so they would fit in within the guidelines so they can do that.”

Despite these limitations, students may not notice the effects of the guidelines yet.

“Some people haven’t realized it completely yet, but I think they’ll start to realize once we get later into the year and they’re like, ‘Where’s Panda Express?’” Senior Class Vice President Zoe Nunez-Garcia said. “‘Where’s all these foods that we typically get?’” 

According to the regulation, nutrition standards only apply to foods and beverages sold or given to students between midnight the night before until 30 minutes after the end of the school day.

“We try to plan events outside those 30 minutes, and then we can start having the foods that we want,” Nunez-Garcia said. “For Movie Night, since it starts so late, we are able to have essentially any food that we want, and that’s where we’re really going to try to focus our efforts.”

Because of the foods the school is still able to sell, these guidelines may not have that strong of an impact.

“For us, it’s not going to be that big,” Principal Donna Levy said. “We weren’t doing anything crazy. The only thing it does stop [is] the portion sizes of things like cookies we can sell are smaller, so they’re not as many calories.”