State Board of Education approves healthy beverage regulations

Face The State Staff Report

The State Board of Education spent Wednesday hearing testimony about how to implement rules that will limit soft drinks in Colorado schools. While the board's Republican members expressed concern about the rules, their hands were tied by new law passed earlier this year.

During the 2008 legislation session, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 129, which requires public schools, including charters, to avoid making soft drinks and other heavily sugared beverages available to students in vending machines, cafeterias and at on-campus events. The task of adopting and implementing the new rules was then passed to the board. Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, sponsored the legislation and sold it as a health measure and way to fight childhood obesity.

But Chairwoman Pamela Jo Suckla, R-Slickrock, disagreed. “I believe parents should make those decisions,” she said.

Scott Groginsky of the Colorado Children’s Campaign was one of those testifying before the board, and he harped on the issue of child obesity as a primary need for stricter regulation. Though Colorado is one of the leanest states, child obesity rates are on the rise here. According to the CCC, nearly 29 percent of Colorado children ages 2 to 14 were considered overweight or at risk for being overweight in 2005.

A group of rural superintendents believe the new rules gets at the issue of local control, not health. Paula Stephenson, director of the Colorado Rural Schools Caucus, which represents 115 of Colorado’s 140 rural school districts, wrote a letter to board expressing concern. “These issues are the reason local boards exist,” she wrote, adding that many districts already have policy addressing healthy beverages and called the new rules “overkill.”

Vice Chairman Bob Schaffer, R-Fort Collins, agreed. “I find the underlying bill dubious at best,” he said. “It’s not consistent with our state tradition of local control.”

In the end, the board unanimously passed the requirements outlined in SB 199 and also amended the rules to include stricter restrictions than the law required. An amendment offered by board member Evie Hudak, D-Arvada, prohibits the sale of diet soda in high schools. The original rules already prohibited the sale of diet soda in elementary and middle schools. Schaffer then offered an amendment that beverages available in school be produced in Colorado "to the greatest extent possible."

Gibbs is rumored to have a "healthy snack bill" coming down the pipe next session.