School starts organic salad bar at $36,000 cost

March 7--Every time she passes the salad bar in her high school cafeteria, Willa Murphy is reminded of what she and her friends have accomplished — and the work she feels they have left to do.

Earlier this year, Murphy's school — Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo — installed the organic salad bar at a cost of $36,000. The bar came largely in response to a two-year campaign by Murphy and several other students to replace the food served in the cafeterias of the Tamalpais Union High School District with local, organic produce and meats.

Other student activists might see the presence of the Drake salad bar as a victory. Murphy sees it as a first step. She notes that students who receive a free or reduced lunch cannot purchase an entree from the salad bar, and that nothing like it is available in the other high school cafeterias of the Tamalpais district.