The week before the start of the 2022-23 school year, Food Connects hosted a Celebration of Farm to School for school administrative teams and food service directors. We are so proud of the work being done by Farm to School teams at our member schools in Windham Central Supervisory Union, Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, and Windham Southeast School District, and we are grateful to the leaders who help make the work possible. At the event, we shared highlights from the 2021-22 school year at each member school, and we want to take a moment to share those highlights with a wider audience. Read on to hear the wonderful things happening in schools throughout the region!
The Lunch Monitor: An Incomplete and Ongoing Guide to Farm to School Policy
There’s a lot going on at the state and national level when it comes to Farm to School policies. So much so that it can be overwhelming and confusing when you’re trying to sort out what’s happening, when it’s happening, and what the impact could be. The Food Connects team wants to invite you along as we follow the latest news and encourage our lawmakers to take action.
We plan to stay up-to-date on important legislation affecting Farm to School programming. We’ll also do the work of figuring out its impact, who’s supporting it, its stage in the legislative process, and why we think it’s important. We’d love to hear from you! Share with us the effect one of these bills would have on you and your community or let us know about something important we may have missed.
Your local legislator would love to hear from you too. We’ll be sure to include contact info with each of our updates. It’s important to remind our representatives that the work they’re doing is important and that their constituents care about these issues.
First up, we’re taking a look at the Universal School Meals Bill that has recently been introduced into the Vermont legislature.
Universal School Meals Bill (Vermont) | S.223 and H.812
What it does
Requires all public schools in Vermont to serve breakfast and lunch to all students at no cost to the student or their family.
Reallocates school meals as an education expense to be included with the rest of the school budget. Schools would be required to fund the portion of school meals not reimbursed through federal funds or other revenue sources.
Maximizes federal reimbursement for meals at all schools through existing programs.
Defines the time spent by students eating school meals during class as instructional time.
Provides a five-year transition period and funding to help schools make the move to universal meals.
Provides an additional full-time position in the Child Nutrition Programs at the Vermont Agency of Education.
Why we think it’s important
We see the positive impact Universal Meals makes in our region. The Brattleboro Town School and the Windham Central Supervisory Union both offer free meals to their students. Both districts have seen dramatic increases in meal participation after implementation. This means more students have a reliable source of healthy, nutritious food and the Food Service Programs have more money through federal and state reimbursements to further improve the quality of their food. This is a virtuous cycle that we’d be excited to see expanded to all districts throughout the state.
Who supports it
In the Vermont House of Representatives, there are 27 co-sponsors of the bill, including Representatives Mollie Burke and Emilie Kornheiser from Brattleboro. The Vermont Senate version of the bill has four co-sponsors. Currently, the bill doesn’t have any co-sponsors from southern Vermont. Reach out to your state senator and encourage them to join this bill!
Current status
Both the House and Senate versions of the bill are currently in committee (sub-groups of the House and Senate that focus on specific areas of governance, like education, health care, and transportation). The Senate Committee on Education and the House Committee on Education are both currently discussing the bill. Most recently, the House Committee on Education met to discuss the bill on February 5th.
Interested in more?
Our friends over at Hunger Free VT are leading the charge. They’ve created a website specifically for the Universal Meals bill. They’ve also made a factsheet with more detailed info on what the bill proposes.
Want to talk with your local representative? Easily look up your local Senators and Representatives here!
Addressing Food Waste in our Schools
Food Connects begins a two-year project aimed at reducing food waste and increasing food access in local schools.
Food Connects has worked with schools for over 10 years to support Farm to School programs that bring together the cafeteria, classroom, and community. Oftentimes, when working with Food Service Directors, we focus on the procurement and preparation of local food in school cafeterias. Until now, less attention was given to food waste and food recovery, despite it being an essential part of Vermont’s food system. Thanks to the support of a two-year $55,550 grant from the Claneil Foundation, we now have the capacity to greatly build upon our current efforts to address food waste and better support our partners.
As a community, our awareness of the urgency and magnitude of climate change has grown. Farm to School programming is already linked to sustainability education in the classroom and carbon reduction in the cafeteria through local food procurement. We want to strengthen our commitment to these efforts and our work in cafeterias is the prime location for this increased focus. Reducing food waste and increasing food access are two sides of the same problem—this project supports the work we’ve done around trauma-informed approaches to Farm to School. All of which led us to the Claneil Foundation, whose Critical Issue Fund is currently focused on food waste.
Share Cooler at Academy School.
We’re excited to work with Food Service Directors to tap into the captive audience each cafeteria presents. Some schools we work with have already taken big steps to reduce food waste, notably Seed2Tray—Windham Central Supervisory Union’s nutrition program—and the Windham Southeast School District. At Seed2Tray, Chris Parker and his staff repackage leftover food to give students the option of taking an additional meal home with them. In the WSESD, share coolers are a common sight in cafeterias and Putney Central School replaced milk cartons with reusable cups and a milk dispenser.
Despite the promising progress, we anticipate obstacles along the way. The biggest of which is that change is often slow to happen and difficult to enact. This is especially true in middle and high schools. With fewer daily routines and more student autonomy, it becomes crucial to reach students with positive messaging and clear steps they can take to be a part of the solution. We anticipate student environmental groups in secondary schools to be our partners in implementing some of these changes. Research indicates that the longest-lasting interventions are those focused on teachers and staff in the school (as opposed to students). As the main implementers of new systems and the setters of culture in schools, co-opting school staff will be essential. We’ll need to ensure that our best practices are streamlined and easy for busy staff to incorporate into their daily routines.
With these potential challenges in mind, over the next year, we will work closely with schools to refine their current practices and pilot new ones. By the end of this stage of the project, we will engage with at least ten schools in southeast Vermont and the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. The list of potential interventions includes share coolers, repackaging meals, composting systems, school-based food shelves, improving cafeteria environments, and continuing to improve meal quality. We’re also excited to discover new interventions along the way!
In the second phase of the project, we’ll refine this list and highlight the three best practices which have the largest impact relative to their ease of implementation. We will collaborate with state agencies to make sure the practices are aligned with relevant regulations and interview staff from pilot schools to better understand their perspectives. Finally, we’ll take all this information and create a toolkit and workshop to be shared with stakeholders throughout New England.
What I’m most excited about regarding this new project is how it connects strongly with the work we already do in schools and approaches that work through a new lens. I’m sure that in addition to new food waste reduction strategies, new interventions and practices will be uncovered that support other aspects of Farm to School programming. Collaboration is an integral part of this project. I’m looking forward to deepening the relationships we already have with our partners and beginning work with new stakeholders as well.
By Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager
We would like to work with you!
Are you a teacher, administrator, school nutrition staff, or parent in southeast Vermont or the Monadnock Region and would like to see your school take up this work with Food Connects?
Does your school have innovative practices in food waste reduction and increasing food access?