Two colleagues approached me last summer with an intriguing pitch: They wanted to trace the meat, poultry and other food served in school cafeterias all the way back to their manufacturers. Parents, they said, were often in the dark about the quality of the food their kids eat at school — much less who supplies it — and they suspected school officials didn't know enough about the foods' sources to act when students fell ill.

Anthony DeBarros is a senior database editor at USA TODAY.

I drive by an elementary school on my way to work every day. More than once there’s been a police cruiser idling in the school’s parking lot with lights flashing and the officer standing nearby.

Although those incidents never involved a major crime, on several occasions this year the Tulsa World has chronicled arrests at schools.

Gavin Off is the data editor at the Tulsa World in Oklahoma and a former analyst for the IRE and NICAR Database Library.