Education United States Project #24814

Get schools cooking!

by Chef Ann Foundation

Project Report | May 19, 2021
Farm to Fork | Chef Ann Foundation

By Carolyn Booth | Director of Development

Salad Bars to Schools

The past year has been challenging on many fronts, for countless people globally. In the US, we have been challenged with the loss of loved ones, health issues, isolation, remote schooling, unemployment, racial injustices and many other difficulties. School food teams have pivoted to remote feeding and worked to ensure that children in their communities have access to the school meals they have come to rely on.

Before the pandemic and over the last decade, salad bars have become a proven tool for school food service teams to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables during lunch. Districts struggled over the last year to ensure their remote feeding programs distributed adequate amounts of fresh produce.

We were excited by recent guidance from the CDC (below) on how to reopen salad bars safely next school year —

GUIDANCE FOR WHAT SCHOOL NUTRITION PROFESSIONALS AND VOLUNTEERS AT SCHOOLS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COVID-19 | CDC

If traditional self-serve stations such as hot and cold food bars, salad or condiment bars are offered:

Require students and staff to wear a mask over the nose and mouth when waiting in line and when serving themselves food.
Provide handwashing stations or hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol and encourage use before use of self-service station.
Encourage students and staff to remain at least 6 feet apart while waiting in line by providing physical guidance and visual cues, such as tape or graphics on floors or sidewalks and signs on walls.
If shared objects (e.g., utensils, tongs) are used, continue to replace them according to food safety code.
Ensure that used or dirty non-disposable food service items are handled with gloves and washed, rinsed, and sanitized to meet food safety requirements. Employees and volunteers should wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds after removing their gloves or after handling used or dirty food service items.
Protect unpackaged food items from contamination by providing barriers, such as sneeze shields.

As the number of Covid cases drops and more people get vaccinated, we are excited to move back to more regular food service in schools. It is inspiring to hear that so many districts plan to reopen their salad bars next school year. Since 2010, Salad Bars to Schools has granted nearly 6000 salad bars, reaching nearly 3 million children across the country. Next year will be very special for this initiative as the first salad bars we granted created access for kindergarteners who will be high school seniors in 2021/22. We are proud that Salad Bars to Schools can celebrate supporting access to salad bars for children through their entire K-12 experience.

Many districts have waited patiently after submitting their application to Salad Bars to Schools. With the latest CDC guidance, we have begun to review applications and will be reaching out to confirm districts’ existing needs for salad bars with the intention to grant new bars in the Fall of 2021.

We are excited to announce that applicants for a Salad Bars to Schools grant will now receive a free salad bar operations course through the Chef Ann Foundation’s School Food Institute. We have captured years of best practices from districts that have implemented salad bars in one virtual personal learning course. We will continue to share updated guidelines and additional resources to ensure districts are able to run a successful salad bar program.

Cheers to school year 2021/2022, we are looking forward to even more healthy and fresh meals in schools!

Sincerely,

Mara Fleishman, CEO, Chef Ann Foundation

Brandy Dreibelbis, Chef Ann Foundation

Links:

Farm to Fork Video

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Jan 26, 2021
Stirring Up School Food Change | 2020 Results

By Carolyn Booth | Director of Development

Feeding Equity

With sustained support like yours, it allows nonprofits like ours to flex when things change, and things certainly changed in 2020. With little to no federal guidance, school districts were burdened with not only educating and feeding kids but creating protocols and processes to keep kids and staff safe through COVID-19. Our team quickly changed gears to help our school districts through this.

Numbers

School Food Institute Scholarships. 125 were given out in 2020. With many school food professionals not able to work on the job school food management needed support with virtual professional development.
Hero Highlights 12 audio and blog stories told. School food professionals needed to hear how others were doing things, they needed acknowledgement for their front line work and CAF was able to share their stories and resources.
Serving fresh food during remote feeding. When districts moved to virtual learning they had to ensure kids still got school meals and that meant serving to-go through remote feeding stations. It also meant that processed packaged food was easier. We worked directly with 20 of our district partners to help them continue to serve fresh, cooked from scratch food.
Emergency Feeding We added over 30 resources on the Lunch Box. USDA guidance, emergency response plans from leading districts, meal kitting, marketing, recipes to-go and much more

Scratch Cooking not only supports the health of the child it also has far reaching effects:

Planet: Scratch cooking makes local procurement more attainable, improves community support, and increases school meal acceptance and participation. Each dollar invested in farm to school stimulates an additional $0.60-$2.16 of local economic activity.

Career: When school districts move to a scratch cook program, food service team members increase their skills and value in the workforce. They are no longer just qualified for heat and serve, they understand storing, prepping, and preparing food.

Equity: As the second largest food relief program in the country, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) provides a unique opportunity for equal access to healthy, scratch-cooked meals that students of all races and backgrounds need to thrive and meet their full potential.

Health: School districts that increased the proportion of fresh and scratch cooked foods offered reported improved student nutrition and increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, increased physical activity, and improved cognitive function.

Academic: Better-quality diets are linked to improved cognitive function, longer attention spans, increased work capacity, better grades, and improved test scores, with a particularly positive improvement for low-income students.

In addition to our core programming (which still continues during the pandemic), CAF has pivoted quickly to develop a COVID-19 School Food Resources and Support webpage and provided technical assistance to our Get School Cooking cohorts across the nation. We have also been showcasing the incredible work that school food teams are doing nationwide to feed children in our digital series, Hero Highlights. Now, more than ever, CAF is a source for hope and support each and every day. We are engaged with school food professionals on the front lines, sharing tools, resources, and guidance to ensure that every child has access to healthy food during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Due to the pandemic, so much is changing in the area of feeding our kids at school. This has become a critical issue in communities across our nation. Our nation was already facing a public health crisis before COVID-19. Because of their diets, America's children have shorter life expectancies than their parents; nearly 1 in 3 kids have obesity; 1 in 3 will have diabetes; and 1 in 5 will go hungry.

COVID-19 has exposed and magnified our already broken U.S. food system. The resulting quarantine(s) and economic downturn puts us at an even higher risk for serious food equity and health crises due to its direct impact on school food programs, which are an anchor of our nation’s nutrition security system. Schools around the nation are turning to us for new and immediate school food strategies and tools to safely and healthily serve children nutritious school meals, be they remote or in the classroom, which includes 22 million kids who rely on free and reduced price school lunch, breakfast, and after school meals.

We hope you will stick by us in 2021 as your financial support for all of the essential work of the Chef Ann Foundation is critical as many funders change priorities and eliminate support all together. While we are proud of our successes, we know we still have a long way to go.

Changing the Way We Feed Our Kids

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Oct 1, 2020
Stirring Up School Food Change

By Carolyn Booth | Director of Development

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