By Spot Us Greetings Spot.us Community!
Hi! I'm Serena, the reporter working on the Sustainable School Lunch pitch along with Fionnola Villamejor, award-winning journalist and concerned mother, who will be the peer-review editor for the story. Fionnola is very interested in school issues; she’s also working on an investigation into the monitoring of teacher behavior in Millbrae where she lives. Needless to say, we’re very excited to have Fionnola on board!
So now that the team is in place, reporting on “Sustainable School: What’s for Lunch?” has begun!
Last Friday, I interviewed both the Director of Food Services at Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which runs 32 National School Lunch sites in Santa Cruz County, as well as a sustainable foods specialist who conducted an extensive review of Santa Cruz City Schools Food Services Department. We thought Santa Cruz would be an interesting region to investigate because it’s rich in sustainable agriculture and localist values. We want to know how much of the area’s abundant produce and sustainable ideals are incorporated into local schools?
I learned that while Pajaro Valley has made a lot of progress in serving healthier meals by cutting out candy, soda and fried foods, there are still many obstacles to introducing healthier, more sustainable menu items — the most pressing being time and money.
Due to the state budget crisis, state reimbursement for meals has been cut from about 22 cents to only six cents per meal, slashing the department's budget from around $53,000 to only $15,000 last May and June. Consequently, the department has lost five employees and the remaining food service workers are doing more with less to accommodate the increasing number of kids on free and reduced lunch. Pajaro Valley’s most popular menu items are chicken, pizza, grilled cheese, breakfast-for-lunch and nachos. There’s also a vegetarian option every day and every meal is served with a choice of fruit and/or vegetables and milk. While some would argue that the menu still looks similar to that of a fast-food restaurant, the director said it’s mainly an effort to serve what kids like.
“We want to make sure they eat lunch,” the director (who I’ll name in the published article) said.
Most of the food comes from large suppliers that fulfill the district’s bidding calls. Many of the distributors are based in the Bay Area; however, the director wasn’t sure of where the food is actually produced. She mentioned strawberries grown in Watsonville being shipped to Sacramento before being distributed back to Watsonville. This is just one small example of the complicated distribution process for shipping to local schools.
Why can’t schools just get contracts with local farmers? Seasonal availability, liability insurance and lack of distribution networks are just a few things standing in their way, but this is a complex issue we’re working to investigate.
More in-depth posts about the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and insight from the Sustainable Food Specialist to come!
Here’s an investigative article about a school district in Washington that I think is a good example of where I'd like to take this story. Would you readers like to see something like this about local school districts? Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas, tips, leads, etc. We look forward to working with you all!
