Clovis fourth-graders take on the system and win strawberry milk for their classmates

A group of Clovis fourth-graders celebrated civil civic engagement on Friday after successfully petitioning the district to bring strawberry milk to campus for a day.

Evan Swearingen, a fourth-grader at Garfield Elementary School, said he was inspired by an article his class read in Scholastic Magazine about a student in Missouri who convinced his school to put strawberry milk on the lunch menu.

“He wrote a petition, and he got strawberry milk back in the cafeteria, so I thought I would do the same thing,” Evan told The Fresno Bee’s Education Lab.

Evan began collecting signatures for his petition during recess, gathering 43 signatures.

“Then, the second recess, I got a lot more. And then, after the first 100, I thought, ‘why don’t we get extras just to ensure it,’” he said.

He recruited classmates Sabrina Jones and Chloe Hale, who wrote essays about strawberry milk, and Bree Ortiz, who created an illustration.

“I feel like strawberry milk gives students a whole new option. Because some kids, they don’t feel like the plain milk is good, or they don’t think any milk is good, so this gives them something new to try,” Chloe said.

After collecting 151 signatures, students took their cause to teacher Rita Twet, who encouraged them to take their case to Principal Jennifer Bump.

“It kind of just started as talk,” Twet said Friday. “We didn’t really know where it was going.”

The students quickly won their principal’s support.

“I called Robert Schram, director at Campus Catering, and shared with him how excited I was that our kids were working together to do something positive for their school,” Bump said.

Bump said strawberry milk was discontinued on Clovis campuses because Producers Dairy, the company that provides milk to the school district, was short-staffed.

But when the district reached out to Producers Dairy, the company quickly agreed to make a special batch of strawberry milk for Valentine’s Day, Bump said.

Evan said the victory has inspired him to continue to work on other projects in the future. “I learned, so, warriors fight for war, right? Well, people can fight for change,” Evan said.

“It makes it exciting when something like this does happen because now, moving forward kids are going to see, wow, what else can I do or what else should I do?” Twet said.

This story was originally published February 12, 2022 at 8:36 AM.