Student’s Strawberry Milk Story Goes Nationwide
Esteban Perez wants to be famous, according to his fourthgrade teacher at Anderson Elementary School. And it would seem he is getting a little closer.
After successfully circulating a petition to bring strawberry milk back to his school last fall (the entire district ended up getting strawberry milk), Esteban’s story went nationwide. Scholastic News published a story on whether schools should serve flavored milks and mentioned his petition. Then The Washington Post published a piece about a boy in California named Jordan Reed who read about Esteban’s petition and decided to lead a protest at his school to try to get chocolate milk served in the cafeteria there. The result of the protest was that the school decided to serve chocolate milk as a treat once a week. The Washington Post’s online article linked to the McDonald County Press story about Esteban’s petition.
On March 31, students in Johnni Ernst’s fourth-grade class read the Scholastic News story that inspired Jordan Reed. Ernst read the story aloud to the students while they read along and had some strawberry milk and brownies. The piece presented pros and cons of schools serving flavored milks. Some of the pros were benefits of milk to the immune system and preventing food waste from students not drinking the white milk that is offered. One of the cons was that flavored milk has almost twice the sugar of white milk.
Esteban said of the Scholastic News story, “I’m like, whoa, it’s actually all there. They didn’t miss a single thing.”
Regarding having inspired Jordan Reed to lead a protest, Esteban said, “It makes me feel amazing.
If you put your mind to it, it can happen.”
He said he would like to thank his friends and family.
Ernst said, “I’m super proud. I didn’t expect it to go from just our district to a kid in California. I am very proud of Esteban and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s done this because he’s very smart and outgoing. I thought maybe he would go to Mrs. (Principal Sarah) Messley and we would have strawberry milk. To go to the whole district and then this Jordan Reed in California — you don’t see outside your district sometimes.”
She said of the Scholastic News article, “I loved it. I was a little surprised they posed it in a way of the good side and the bad side,” but that was because there is a poll on the website to vote on whether schools should serve flavored milks, she added.
“They took something fun and made it educational,” she said.