MMSD Gets Fresh Food Grant

The Madison Metropolitan School District received a grant to provide elementary students from 10 schools across the city with healthy fresh fruit and vegetable snacks three times a week throughout the upcoming school year.

The $200,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program will be spread among Madison elementary schools with the largest numbers of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals. 

For the fourth year in a row, students across the city will be munching on fresh spinach, cherry tomatoes, apples, kohlrabi, bell peppers, carrots and many other fresh, local foods during snack time.

For nine schools involved in the program, students will receive snacks provided by district food services and the Research, Education, Action and Policy on Food Group’s (REAP) Classroom Snack Program. The tenth school, Lake View Elementary, will rely primarily on the Farmers’ Market and working with local farmers.

REAP, a Madison non-profit organization, collaborates with local farms and Madison school food services to provide locally produced snacks and healthy eating education to Madison students through the organization’s Farm to School Program.

As part of the initiative, the organization’s Classroom Snack Program will bring about 4,500 servings of local farmers’ produce to elementary classrooms each week during the school year, REAP’s Farm to School Program Manager Lisa Jacobson said.

Depending on the produce, that makes about 500 to 800 pounds of fruits or vegetables to be cleaned and prepared each week, she added.

With fresh produce coming into schools each week, REAP has received positive reponses from students, parents and teachers, many of whom have encouraging stories to tell about the program, Jacobson said.

One such story involves a young girl choosing a second helping of fresh spinach over another slice of cake, much to the surprise of the teacher and parent, Jacobson said.

Another story tells of a class of students introduced to the vegetable kohlrabi, she continued. At the beginning of the school year, only two students willingly tried the vegetable, but by year’s end, only two refused to eat it.

“Kids should be introduced to food over and over,” Jacobson said. “[REAP is] continuing to offer food in various ways throughout the year to develop their palate.”

Over time, many of the students learn to like a variety of fruits and vegetables, she added.

All the 10 elementary schools involved in the Farm to School program—Emerson, Falk, Glendale, Lake View, Leopold, Lincoln, Lindbergh, Sandburg, Schenk and Thoreau—have populations with over 50 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) school eligibility data.

In fact, over half of MMSD schools have populations with 50 percent or more students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, with some reaching the upper 70 and 80 percents.

“The program intended to provide the maximum amount of nutrition to the population it feels it can give the most value to,” Jacobson said. “Students from underserved communities are eating low levels of fresh fruit and veggies, this program targets those students.”

The benefits of the program extend beyond the classroom as well, with just over $60,000 spent on local produce last year, DPI Public Health Nutritionist, Alicia Dill said.

The true amount spent on local farmers’ produce may be even more, considering not all 166 Wisconsin schools involved in the program reported back to DPI, she added.  

Madison elementary schools alone spent about $48,000 on local fruits and vegetables, about 28 percent of the total amount awarded to MMSD schools, Dill said.

The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, Farm to School and other similar programs are part of a nationwide initiative to move toward healthier, more nutritious school meals, a trend strengthened by the enactment of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 in December.

Over the next ten years, the $4.5 billion plan will make school meals more affordable to low-income students, set new nutritional standards, improve food safety requirements and provide students with healthier school meals to combat childhood obesity.

One proposal for altered nutritional standards would require school lunches to offer three-fourths to one cup of vegetables and one-half to one cup of fruit each day, Dill said. These requirements nearly double the previous one-half to one cup total for both fruits and vegetables previously offered in schools.

While the proposal aims to make school breakfast and lunch healthier, providing more fruits and vegetables is a financial burden on schools already struggling to sustain lunch programs.

To alleviate this burden, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act places more restrictions on the cost of foods and increases prices in schools with low rates for paid lunches, Dill said. The government will also reimburse schools 6 cents per meal for meeting new nutrition standards.

Changes introduced in the Act will go into effect during the 2012-2013 school year.

But until then, elementary students across Madison will continue to get a weekly dose of fresh apples, carrots, spinach and much more.