School Food Reboot Program brings scratch-made meals to New York state schools

Over the past year, six school districts in Tompkins County, New York have been making progress in serving students scratch-made meals made with local ingredients thanks to a program put on by nonprofits the Chef Ann Foundation and the Park Foundation. 

Named the School Food Reboot, the program came about after the two nonprofits teamed up together to host a culinary bootcamp for Tompkins County school food operators last summer. 

“It kind of turned into this nice relationship where I think that the Park Foundation realized that we could maybe help them make some more strides to start serving better food and cover more areas of resources with the school food program reboot that was going on in Tompkins,” says Executive Director of Culinary at the Chef Ann Foundation Brandy Dreibelbis.   

Already, the program has helped the districts increase their scratch cooking from about 53% to 67% and has enabled them to serve more meals with local ingredients. 

Local food, it’s what’s for lunch

A big focus for each of the participating districts recently has been pushing to include more local food into their menus. 

At Lansing Central School District, for example, Food Service Director Katie Swearingen and her team have spent the past year or so going over their products and replacing them with local versions, when possible. They have also created a cycle menu to help them with purchasing forecasting. 

“This gives us a better forecasting idea of if maybe I wanted to swap out cheese for New York cheese, for example, I had a better vision of how many pounds of cheese I need for the year versus, let me just figure it out as I go and run out or have too much,” she says. 

Local ingredients have also made their way into the menu at Newfield Central School District where dishes like sloppy joes made with local beef have become regular offerings on the lunch line. 

The School Food Reboot program has also allowed the district to expand its local ingredients further with the addition of salad bars in its cafeterias.  

“They funded the salad bars, which we didn't really have, and it was awesome when those came in, because it introduced our kids right away to some new foods and some really healthy foods,” says Newfield Schools Superintendent Eric Hartz. 

While some training was required at the beginning to teach students proper salad bar etiquette, building their own meals from the bar has now become second nature to them. 

“I was just in New Field Elementary last week, and it was taco day, so to watch a bunch of elementary school kids go through the line, get their taco, put their own shredded lettuce, black beans and cheese, build their own taco, and then build a salad on top of that, all from the same salad bar is awesome,” says Newfield Business Administrator Perry Gorgen. “And the kids are so proud of the selections they're making.”

Teamwork makes the dream work 

All of the success the districts have made over these past few years are due in large part to the nutrition team making connections with others in their district, says Senior School Food Operations Specialist for the Chef Ann Foundation Patrick Kenneally.

 At Lansing Central, for example, Swearingen has presented in front of the school board about their program and met with middle school students to explain why she had made changes to their offerings like reducing the amount of a la carte items sold. 

“It was a good opportunity to provide some education to them,” she says. “They told me some of the items that I've been serving in the last two months that they loved and things they didn't. So, it was really productive conversation back and forth directly with the students of things they would like to see more of.”

 Swearingen also worked with high school students who wanted to know more about the district’s foodservice program for a capstone project. 

Over at Newfield, Hartz and Gorgen have also worked to make sure the district as a whole is committed to the same goals surrounding the nutrition program. When they first introduced the salad bars, for example, they used grant funding provided by the Park Foundation to purchase free salad bar tickets for the teachers so they could grab a meal with their students. 

“Teachers were all eating from the salad bar in those first couple of weeks, which meant the kids were seeing that and that helped reinforce the point about everybody being committed,” says Gorgen.

Along with strengthening relationships within their individual communities, the districts have also been building relationships with each other. Every month, they all meet at a different district to get an inside look of where they are in their progress and provide advice and encouragement to each other. 

“They're able to see what's going on firsthand,” says Dreibelbis. “Just having somebody to lean on when you're going through a change like this, is so important.”