Carey Thornton, second from left, from Washington State University King County Extension's Food $ense program, helps students harvest green beans and other vegetables in an Auburn School District garden. Food from the garden is used in meals students prepare as part of a summer program.
Erick Boutin, director of child nutrition services for the Auburn School District, checks out a sample of hay grown by a WSU King County Extension farmer.
ADVERTISEMENT
Progress … and Room to Grow
This past spring, Bastyr University screened Two Angry Moms, a documentary by filmmaker Amy Kalafa and Dr. Susan Rubin, that chronicles Dr. Rubin’s struggles to improve her children’s school lunch program in a system weighed down with dependence on junk food vendor income, bureaucratic red tape, and budget restrictions.
As a Seattle mom who attended Seattle Public Schools in the ’70s, the film was a flashback to my elementary school days: the deep fat fryers, greasy entrees, and lots and lots of sugar and junk food.
As I watched the film and applauded the efforts of these two “angry moms,” I was also thinking: “Wow, Seattle Schools have already come a long way” – from banning outside vending machines to following U.S. Department of Agriculture requirements for serving low-fat, high-fiber foods to adding new menu items.
Anita Finch, Seattle Public Schools’ director of child nutrition services, says many parents know little about how the district’s school lunch program has improved in recent years. “When I compare our programs to others across the country we are doing really well,” she says. Sustainability and profitability are key components to the success of farm-to-school programs. “Programs must be set up with competitive pricing so that farmers can afford to sell and schools can afford to buy – it must make economic sense,” says Clayton Burrows, a local farmer and director of Growing Washington, a cooperative of local farmers. Burrows believes farm-to-school programs will become more workable as large school districts like Seattle work to develop purchase, delivery, and education strategies. “In the coming years it’s going to make more sense for local farms to provide local products,” says Burrows. “Rising fuel costs, climate change, and the reducing the carbon footprint of farming and procurement are all factors.” The state’s new farm-to-school legislation provides an exciting opportunity for parents to support school nutrition services and our local farming communities. Here are some ways to get involved:
• Check out what food is available at your children’s school, visit and have breakfast or lunch with them. • Read the new Seattle Public Schools 2008-2009 lunch calendar, which lists new ethnic lunches each month. Preview the calendar with your child and encourage them to try something new. The calendar also offers recipes that you and your child can prepare at home. • Consider joining the Seattle School’s Nutrition Advisory Council. Anyone with an interest in children and health can apply to become a member! Interested? Contact the Nutrition Advisory Council at 206-252-0685 or go to www.seattleschools.org. • Find out if your school participates in Food$ense, a free nutrition program for schools where at least half of the kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Food$ense provides nutrition educators who work with students in the classroom. For information contact Martha Aitkan, Food$ense Program Manager, at 206-205-3210 or go to www.king.wsu.edu/nutrition. • Speak up! Contact the governor, state legislators and school board members, and urge them to make improvements for child nutrition programs a high priority.
For information on the documentary Two Angry Moms or to schedule a screening, go to www.twoangrymoms.com.
Farm-to-School Program Puts Auburn Ahead of Many Districts
By Riki Mafune
The Local Farms-Healthy Kids bill that Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law earlier this year has lifted huge barriers that once made it all but impossible for local farms to get their food into schools. Because of previous federally mandated bidding and purchasing requirements, farmers simply couldn’t compete with big, out-of-state food purveyors that sold food at much cheaper prices.
Now that those bidding barriers no longer exist, schools are being encouraged to apply for grants that will allow – and, in fact, require – that they purchase at least some of their fresh fruits and vegetables directly from local farms. The food-to-schools push begins with elementary schools where at least half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
Schools that win grants will have to develop their own systems for procuring, delivering and preparing local, in-season products. These logistics can be complicated. Getting farm-to-school programs up and running will be hardest on large school districts like Seattle’s, which has one central kitchen that sends food to about 30 elementary schools.
South of Seattle, the Auburn School District has a two-year head start with its fruit and vegetable program, which provides a blueprint that smaller local school districts can follow. Eric Boutin, Auburn’s child nutrition services director, spoke with Seattle’s Child about the challenges that he and other Washington school districts face as they strive to “eat local”:
SC: Give us a look into the fresh fruit and vegetable programs that you’ve developed for the Auburn School District.
EB: If you take a look at our school lunch programs, you will see some of the most organized, efficient food service operations in all of Puget Sound.
We have partnerships with “Growing Washington,” a group of Washington state farmers who have products available throughout the year. They have committed to growing 20,000 pounds of potatoes for our 22 schools next year – we serve them oven-roasted instead of French fried. We purchase lettuces from “Let Us Farm,” and apples and pears from Baird Orchards in Eastern Washington.
SC: You have a successful school garden program. What is your model for this program?
EB: In June 2007, the school district sent me to Berkeley, Calif., to attend a seminar presented by the Center for Ecoliteracy. The session, Rethinking School Lunch, was both beautiful and powerful. Chef Alice Waters is the inspiration and force behind the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, which is universally noted as the model school garden in the United States. Between the Berkeley session and the MLK garden, the inspiration for our own garden took place, but we wanted to take it a little further. Although still in the growing stage, we have a little over one acre between Auburn High School and Washington Elementary School.
Mrs. Jackl and Mr. Blackburn, teachers at Auburn’s Washington Elementary School, started a Garden Club. Fourteen students eagerly planted and tended the plants in May and June 2008. Also, the high school has a career and technical education class taught by Mr. Bruce Morris. These horticulture students helped plant the orchard and worked on the design of the garden.
We have planted 45 apple, pear, plum and fig trees from local Raintree Nursery, and we have a very nice vegetable garden. We endeavor to plant foods that kids will readily eat.
SC: How does your garden program compliment your educational goals?
EB: We think the connecting the cafeteria with an outdoor classroom (“The Center for the Study of Lunch”) inside an old greenhouse has made this program unique…to help make the connection between the earth, the plants and foods we can eat and the healthy lives we can live.
A garden is a perfect place to put a real-world context on many of the concepts students are learning in the classroom – health and nutrition, obviously, but math and science and art all can be directly experienced in a garden. It engages kids, and hopefully helps them develop an appreciation for the beauty and benefits of growing and eating wonderful foods.
We have just started plans at Hazelwood Elementary for a child nutrition garden. Fifth-grade teacher, Holly Donnelly, wants to use the garden to teach WASL-linked science outcomes. We will use the resulting produce in our kitchen and lunch program.
SC: What are the some of the challenges in partnering with local farmers?
EB: “Farm to School" programs sound wonderful. The challenge comes in the actual implementation. A school district takes on a lot of extra work to make these connections – from individual contact with a host of farmers (rather than one delivery company that already does this work) – to receiving and distributing the food from multiple vendors, to paying them all individually.
I am not saying it is not a positive program, I am just saying it is much more labor-intensive – which means expensive. It seems to me, the key needs to be to get our delivery companies to source and promote local food products and have us order from them. This would solve the distribution/contact/invoicing problems. It is not fair or realistic to expect your school food service director to spend nights and weekends visiting farmers’ markets to try to round up local products. We should be looking at food systems that support our local farmers, that are sustainable and replicable, that will best serve all parties involved.
SC: How can parents help support improvements to our nutrition services at home?
EB: The lunch programs in our schools need to serve all students in the community. Parents can help by reviewing the menu with the children and helping them to make the best choices. When they get home, ask them what they ate with their main entrée. Did they choose fresh fruits and vegetables?
Parents can also call or e-mail their food service department and give menu ideas. We have the constraints of budget and labor cost – and offering choices that 300 to 600 kids from widely diverse backgrounds will find tempting and delicious – but we welcome new ideas and the enthusiasm that can help get the children to choose the new menu items.
SC: Finally, how can we help resolve the funding constraints all our school districts face?
EB: Food service directors throughout Puget Sound understand good nutrition and fresh healthy foods, but when you look at the lunch program financially, you will see we have about one dollar to pay for the food for each lunch. One dollar to pay for the milk, bread, entrée, vegetable, fruit and occasionally a dessert – QUITE A CHALLENGE!
Child nutrition programs are primarily funded by the federal government, but also a little by the state. Parents can help support the school meals program by commenting on the federal Farm Bill when it comes up for renewal, and the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act…also tell the governor or their representatives that we must better fund our nutrition programs.
Parents can also say to their local school board: “We must serve our children better,” and ask for their support (financially and administratively). Our school board has a true understanding of the need for quality nutrition programs and they continue to challenge us to improve to better serve our students.
Riki Mafune is a Seattle nutrition and health educator and mother of two.
