Gay Anderson: Sharing knowledge

At a Glance

Accomplishments

Gay Anderson has transformed the foodservice at Brandon Valley School District by:

Successful foodservice directors are skilled at improving their own operations, but not everyone has the ability to impart their knowledge to fellow directors. That’s what sets Gay Anderson apart from many of her peers.

Since 2003, the child nutrition director and district wellness coordinator for the Brandon Valley School District, in Brandon, S.D., has promoted health and sustainability—and streamlined costs—in her own district. Now, she shares her experiences with her peers.

Finding solutions

Implementing the nutrition requirements of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010—and actually getting students to eat the new menu items—has been a challenge for school districts nationwide. But Anderson has made strides to overcome that hurdle.

In 2012, her district noticed that plate waste had increased as the result of the new standards, which require students to take a half cup of fruits and vegetables during lunch. Anderson’s staff started to monitor plate waste, ultimately determining that 67 percent of vegetables and 35 percent of fruits were being thrown away.

To solve this dilemma, Anderson convinced Brandon Valley’s school board to let students who were still hungry, after eating their lunch, to return to the serving line for free fruits and vegetables. She also got teachers to encourage students to try new vegetables and fruits and to eat what they take.

Since 2012, the district has brought the average cost of wasted food down from 50 cents per student to as low as 13 cents per student in one school. She credits her staff with helping to shift students’ behaviors by walking them through the line more slowly, prompting them to select their preferred fruits and vegetables by offering them choices versus just serving them items.

Anderson shared her strategies with other school foodservice operators during a School Nutrition Association (SNA) board of directors panel focused on plate waste that was held in November 2014 at the University of Mississippi in University, Miss. But she says the district still has a long way to go. “We still have kids that look at us and say, ‘You know that I’m going to throw that away,’” she says.

Not only has Anderson brought healthier eating practices to her students, she’s also reached out to members of the community. In 2006, her district began hosting a health fair that features local food vendors, cooking demos, exercise classes and health screenings. Since then, the event has grown from 200 attendees to more than 2,000.

Using healthcare tools

Prior to working at Brandon Valley, Anderson spent nine years in healthcare foodservice, which influenced her early decisions in the district. For example, her decision to introduce a prime vendor program was a direct carryover from her experience in healthcare. Under the program, Brandon Valley agreed to do at least 80 percent of its bulk purchasing through vendors who won bids with the school district in order to help lower costs.

In 2003, the prime vendor program’s first year, the district saved equivalent to 3 percent per meal. “It’s always been a very important relationship for me to have,” she says. 

Anderson also learned early on that the district was using only 20 percent of the money it received from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She started researching ways to fully use the district’s funding and discovered a process known as the Net Off Invoice.

Net Off Invoice allows foodservice departments to work directly with distributors to bid out and acquire specific items, such as ground beef. The foodservice department can use USDA money to pay for the products, but the district must absorb any processing costs.

Anderson and colleague Sandi Kramer, the child nutrition director at Yankton School District in Yankton, S.D., determined that this program would allow them to spec out the exact products they use and save money by using 100 percent of their USDA funding. Anderson made Brandon Valley the state’s Net Off Invoice pilot school. In the first year, she was able to save the district nearly $40,000.

“This is the difference between her and me. I may take something and think about it for a long time,” Kramer says. “What I admire about Gay is that she takes things and puts them into action right away.”

After demonstrating that both the prime vendor and Net Off Invoice programs were effective cost-saving measures, Anderson began to share these practices with her peers. Anderson taught the prime vendor concept to other foodservice directors and started the state’s first prime vendor coalition in the 2012-13 school year. Two other districts have partnered with Anderson’s to pool their purchasing resources to acquire bulk items at a discounted price and send out requests for proposals together.

Over the past three years, the coalition has saved 23-cents-per-student per meal. A fourth school is expected to join the program during the 2015-16 school year, Anderson says.

Anderson and Kramer then worked with state school foodservice officials to start hosting Net Off Invoice seminars for fellow foodservice directors. Attendees could learn about the process, sample vendor products and find out which distributors carried those products. As many as 40 schools began relying on Net Off Invoice to take full advantage of their USDA funds.

To encourage school foodservice employees to share their expertise with fellow professionals, Anderson and Kramer recently created an informal peer-to-peer program that allows school foodservice workers to meet with each other to discuss operational, budget or staffing challenges and share ideas.

“[School foodservice professionals] are all about helping each other out,” Anderson says. “We’ve become very close with our peers across the state and region and we share a lot of information.”

Respect of her peers

Anderson’s involvement in the SNA has also fostered a culture of bringing effective practices shared at the national level back to the school foodservice professionals in South Dakota. She works with fellow SNA members at the national level and gleans information on issues such as plate waste that can be directly applied in her region.

Her superintendent, David Pappone, has noticed Anderson’s influence in the SNA.

“I went out and did a presentation with her and one of my favorite things was seeing how respected she was by her peers,” he says. “It made me proud to have her on my team.”

This fall, Brandon Valley will open its seventh school, which will house about 100 fifth and sixth grade students. The new school will present an unusual nutrition challenge for Anderson. According to federal standards, lunch entrees for students up to fifth grade must be no more than 550 to 650 calories. But students in sixth through eighth grade are allowed 600 to 700 calories.

To address this, Anderson says she is planning to “play” with calorie ranges by creating entrees that fit into either calorie category. She is also consulting with other directors who have gone through similar experiences to determine best practices.

Along with working to improve her school district and others, Anderson also has been trying to improve herself. She headed back to school to earn a college degree. While in school, it wasn’t uncommon for Anderson to juggle a 17-hour course load with a full-time job, SNA responsibilities and a family life, says Kramer.

“Gay likes to set a goal,” Kramer says. “She’s not afraid to put it out there, own it and go for it.”

Anderson plans to graduate this May with a B.A. in business management from University of Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls, S.D. Not only is her milestone a personal achievement, it also keeps a promise that she made to her parents.

“My parents are both gone, but I’m doing this not only for myself, but to honor them,” says Anderson, who has already enrolled in a master’s degree program that starts this fall.