U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School today (April 3), as part of a joint effort to bring fresh food to schools nationwide.
The visit followed last week’s HHS announcement of the firing of 20,000 employees as part of the Trump Administration’s strategy to “Make America Healthy Again.”
“We have a chronic disease crisis in our country,” Kennedy said, and referred to the “major reorganization” within his department to better study and address the problem.
Standing in front of a food service cart laden with fruit and vegetables, both secretaries praised the Alexandria school’s nutrition program as a model for others to follow.
“This is what we should be supporting at USDA,” Rollins said, pointing to the school’s success in “moving farm fresh produce as much as is possible into the schools and into these kids.”
In February, the USDA announced “bold action” by eliminating dozens of federal contracts for programs the administration deemed “frivolous,” including diversity dialogue workshops and international development for historically underrepresented communities. Last month, Rollins and Kennedy announced that their departments would unveil their 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
“We are going to come up with a document that is simple that lets people know with great clarity what kind of foods their children need [to] eat, what kind of foods they can eat and what’s good for them,” Kennedy said. “What’s good nutrition and what we want to [be] collaborating with each other.”
Rollins said that the administration is working with governors in blue and red states on collaborating with state government and school leaders to improve nutrition programs.
“The idea of our founders constitutional vision of the states [as] the laboratories of democracy, of real innovation happening there that the federal government doesn’t have the answer but it shouldn’t to every question begs the larger policy discussion that we’re already having with our governors across the country, in both blue and red [states],” she said.
Incidentally, all students at Ferdinand T. Day get free breakfast funded by the USDA’s Universal Breakfast Program.
According to the school’s website:
We are excited because studies show only 47 of every 100 eligible children eat federally-funded free or reduced price school breakfasts, and studies further show that Universal School Breakfast Programs dramatically increase student participation in school breakfast.
The event was scheduled at the last minute, and the media couldn’t observe Kennedy and Rollins talk to students, cafeteria staff, and school administrators. Reporters and photographers were sequestered in a room near the school entrance and told they weren’t allowed because the parents of the children in the cafeteria didn’t sign release forms allowing their faces to be photographed. The media was shuffled in through the school cafeteria kitchen and got about 15 minutes to speak to the secretaries.
While School Board Chair Michelle Rief and Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Melanie Kay Wyatt made an appearance, Mayor Alyia Gaskins couldn’t break a busy schedule.
“I have commitments on my calendar that were previously scheduled and challenging to move,” Gaskins told ALXnow. “When I give people my word that I’m gonna be somewhere, I want to honor it and not change on such short notice.”
This is Kennedy’s second appearance in the area in recent days, after visiting a local head start program last month.
Update: Following the publication of this story, Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-8th), provided this comment to ALXnow in response to Kennedy’s visit:
Congressman Beyer saw that Secretary Kennedy visited an elementary school in Alexandria today. While Secretary Kennedy did not invite Rep. Beyer to attend, had Rep. Beyer been present he would have directly criticized Secretary Kennedy’s mass layoffs of health workers – many of whom live in Northern Virginia – layoffs which seriously weaken public health, medical research, and food safety, and put Americans’ wellbeing at risk.
Rep. Beyer also would have defended SNAP and other nutrition programs that many Northern Virginians depend on, especially children. He strongly opposes Republican-authored legislation that would couple tax cuts for the wealthy with major cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and other vital programs his constituents rely on.
Rep. Beyer remains firmly convinced that Secretary Kennedy is wildly unqualified to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, and that Kennedy’s appointment and dangerous anti-vaccine agenda are a major calamity for public health in this country.
