Parents of students in a Georgia school district have voted to keep chocolate milk in lunch rooms, reversing the school board’s original suggestion to stop offering the popular dairy drink for students.
According to the Decatur-Avondale Estates Patch, a menu committee was formed in September by the Decatur, Ga., school board after the board heard a proposal to eliminate chocolate milk for younger elementary students and phase it out for higher grades. The committee then conducted a survey of 614 parents and presented new recommendations for menu changes at a school board meeting earlier this month.
The decision to keep or eliminate chocolate milk was close – 50.7 percent of parents wanted to keep chocolate milk on the menu, compared to 49.3 percent who were against the drink.
Some school board members sided with the majority, noting that some students wouldn’t drink white milk if chocolate milk was eliminated from the menu. The board did vote to reduce the sugar content of chocolate milk offered to students beginning in January. Read more about the board’s decision here.
Chocolate milk has been on the chopping block in many school districts around the country, including the Los Angeles Unified School District. Earlier this year, an Oregon school district reinstated chocolate milk less than a year after initially eliminating the popular drink after a study found that students were dumping 72 percent of their non-flavored milk cartons.
