Public Schools of Brookline

Sasha Palmer
Food Service Director
Public Schools of Brookline

The Public Schools of Brookline has many opportunities for students to interact with the Food service program:

• Students and teachers at the Lincoln School track waste in the program over a 4 month period. The results of that study was used in securing a grant to purchase and install dishwashers in all the schools across the district.
• Students also volunteer during their lunch period to sort food and other waste which is used for compost and the compost.
• Students also plant crops in the school gardens which are harvested and used in the cafeteria. Students at the Pierce School had a Salad Day utilizing the produce from the school garden.
• Students also volunteered  to prepare and distribute prepared meals to students whenever the district has labor shortages. 

How do you ensure that students are eating nutritious meals?

Brookline Public School cooks a larger portion of its menu items from scratch starting with basic ingredients. We try to source local ingredients and have utilized local organic greens for our Hyper Local Hydroponic Farmer.

How do you get your food? 

Brookline is a part of a collaborative who purchases food including produce through a collaborative. This helps us in minimizing the administrative burden and helps us access locally sourced food as our vendor aggregates from local sources. We are in the process of finding additional sources to purchase produce as our vendor went out of business recently.

Are there ways that we can get more students involved in their school food system?

One of the best ways that we have seen is getting students involved in the Farm to School Program is to partner with student groups with similar passions. The Brookline Public School has a Food Justice Club that is eager to partner with the district on various initiatives such as food access, equity, and sustainable practices. We are exploring getting students involved in internship programs.

Webster Public Schools

Ellen Nylen
Food Service Director
Webster Public Schools

The bulk of our food comes through the USDA, where we receive unprocessed/minimally processed items such as ground beef, chicken, cheese, and canned and frozen fruits & vegetables. For the rest of our food we are part of a buying cooperative with several other Worcester County/Central MA districts and we go out to bid every year for frozen/grocery, dairy, and bread items. For produce we use our entitlement dollars with DOD Fresh (U.S -grown only); the Worcester Regional Food Hub for local produce; and another local produce vendor who shops at the wholesale market in Boston daily. We comply with the federal regulations. We try to limit the amount of processed foods we serve, and continually strive to increase the number of scratch-cooked meals.

A simple way to get more students involved in their school food system is to have classes tour the cafeteria. Talk to the Food Service Director and Cafeteria Manager and ask questions about their jobs, which after all entail deciding what goes on the menus. Most students, especially older students, are surprised at how much food is made on site, and how much volume the cafeteria produces every day. That is a simple way to start a dialogue between students and the cafeteria. Several years ago I had a meeting with a young lady who wanted to see more vegetarian options at lunch. I asked her to quantify the demand for vegetarian meals, which she did by creating a survey at the high school. As a result the cafeteria added more vegetarian options, and the students felt heard – that’s the kind of relationship we want in order to get more students involved with school food.

Pre-Covid the Bartlett High School Farm to School Team produces a Harvest of the Month taste test event in the cafeteria, which always draws a full crowd of both students and adults. Students develop the presentation for credit in a Business Marketing class. They are tasked with brainstorming a theme for the event; creating marketing materials; working with me to select recipes; and sometimes preparing the recipes with me after school.