Following months of local debate, Superintendent Sara-Jane Querfeld is considering changing the North Haven public schools’ wellness policy to limit non-healthy snacks in classrooms.

“I’ve met with the schools’ unit leaders and they asked me to make it clear across the board that the only food brought into classrooms for celebrations would be for cultural or curricular reasons,” Querfeld said Monday. “After listening to what parents have to say about it at a meeting on March 31, I may do just that.”

The debate centers on whether the schools’ wellness policy allows parents and teachers to bring non-healthy snacks into the classroom for students on birthdays, holidays or cultural events, and other celebrations. One group of local parents believes that they alone should be able to determine what their kids eat at school, while the other camp believes that the school should not be able to restrict the food that their kids can eat.

As it stands, the current wellness policy nutritional guidelines are ambiguous, but partial towards nutritional alternatives.

“The district policy guidelines give each school a certain amount of latitude,” Querfeld said. “We found that some schools were doing a good job and some schools were a little too lax. The guidelines say that food should be healthy and in appropriate portions.”

“Two elementary schools do not allow food celebrations except for cultural and curricular celebrations,” Querfeld added, “while two others do also have food for other celebrations.”

The district’s wellness policy, as adopted June 8, 2006, states that “non-food alternatives are strongly recommended” for “birthday celebrations.” Moreover, “healthy foods are strongly recommended” for “holiday party menus” and “healthy snacks shall only be permitted in appropriate portion sizes.”

The policy also bans food from being used as “an incentive or a reward for good behavior or academic performance,” allows only “student snacks and lunches” to be “stored in the classroom,” allows food consumption only during designated snack times, and limits classroom beverage consumption to water.

The debate began last October after a group of local parents started protesting the Board of Education’s plan to ease up on the wellness policy, which would have allowed parents and teachers more discretion on what and when foods are allowed in the classrooms.

One such parent was Lana Porter-Schmidt. “I got involved after I moved here from Hamden where my child’s school [the Wintergreen Magnet School] had no junk food for parties,” Porter-Schmidt said. “There seemed to be a lot of parties in North Haven schools, and they seemed on the excessive side.”

“I realized last school year that the schools’ wellness policy wasn’t really being followed,” Porter-Schmidt added. “I just thought that we could do better. The school system followed up this year and has taken great efforts to get back to following the policy.”

Porter-Schmidt hoped an updated policy would increase parental power. “I’d love to strengthen the policy to give parents more control over what their children can be given at school,” she said. “We found one classroom where there were over 40 events where parents provided food for kids.”

Querfeld said at the time of the original protests she was not fully aware of the potential childhood obesity risks posed by frequent and non-healthy classroom snacks. To educate herself, school administrators and local parents, Querfeld organized January and March presentations by Dr. Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

“The research she showed us on how obesity rates are growing among children in the past 30 years was really frightening,” Querfeld said. “It made all of us start thinking.”

When contacted, Schwartz said that North Haven’s potential policy tightening represents a national trend after the federal government mandated in 2006 that every school district involved in the national school lunch program needed a written wellness policy. “There are efforts across the country to improve wellness policies,” Schwartz said. “What’s happening in North Haven is certainly not unique.”

Schwartz favors limiting classroom celebrations to healthy alternatives. “There has been a gradual shift in not recognizing the level of overweight children occurring in our school systems,” she said. “People are selfishly only thinking about what they doing and are missing the big picture. They say ‘it’s only one cupcake’ but there are 20 plus birthdays a year in a classroom, plus holidays, plus parties outside the school.”

“My children go to Guilford schools where there is no food at parties,” Schwartz added. “Instead, they have birthday games. It doesn’t take a whole lot of creativity to make a kid feel special. And what we find is that the kids do not even miss cupcakes. I think parents are feeling undermined. Parents of overweight kids are trying to make changes at home to teach wellness, and then they send their kids to school and other parents walk into the classroom and hand out cupcakes.”

Parents opposing a strict policy do not believe that the school should restrict what their children can and cannot to eat. “If a parent doesn’t want their children to eat what is brought into the classroom, then that child doesn’t have to eat,” said local parent Anne Benowitz. “There’s no rule that says you cannot abstain, but there are parents who want everybody to abstain because of their kids.”

“My child doesn’t eat wheat,” Benowitz continued. “That doesn’t mean that I want the school to require a no-wheat policy. I just want to school to educate my child on how to eat properly.”

Benowitz hoped to reach a middle ground on the issue. “I’d like a more equitable compromise, rather than one side winning and one side losing,” she said.

Local parent Michelle Defelice agreed with Benowitz. “We should keep the policy the way it is,” she said. “Food is part of our culture. We always celebrate with some sort of food.”

Defelice offered a compromise in which all food was retained but parties were reduced. “We should allow the room captains to plan parties three to four times a year,” she said. “They would take into account allergies.”

Schwartz thought it was unfair to ask a student to abstain from non-healthy food celebrations. “To tell a kid not to eat a cupcake when everybody else is eating one is ridiculously insensitive,” she said.

Porter-Schmidt was happy that the topic was being discussed by both sides. “I realized that most people don’t even realize we had a wellness policy for the district,” Porter-Schmidt said. “I think that as a community we can do better. I want people talking about the wellness policy, and not just accepting things the way they are.”

Querfeld said she believes the Board of Education is not in favor of changing the policy.

The wellness policy is more than food guidelines, outlining nutritional education, physical education and activity, nutrition in school meals and vending machines, and staff wellness.