Second grade students at JV Forrestal Elementary in Beacon participate in the Chef in the Classroom program with chef interns from the Culinary Institute of America. Carrots were the featured vegetable for the day.
There are only so many opportunities in the day for us to
educate our growing children about the importance of good food choices. When
they’re babies, they have to eat what we serve them. But once they get older
and go to school, the game changes.
As they grow older, our children enter a landscape in which
sugar, fat and artificially manufactured everything can be consumed without
supervision. Mom and Dad don’t have a shot at winning this round of the
parenting game (or do we?)
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“Most kids eat the vast majority of their calories in
school,” notes Sandy McKelvey, a mom of two who lives in Cold Spring and is an
advocate of local foods in local schools. “But we have more control over what
those calories are comprised of than we might think.”
In fact, if your child has come home from school requesting
a kale salad, you probably have McKelvey and other grassroots mom-activists in
the region to thank for that development. Through persistence and the parenting
grapevine, she has helped introduce locally grown foods into schools throughout
the Hudson Valley.
Her initiative, Hudson Valley Farm to School, has humble
roots. It began as a small, personal project after a discussion about cafeteria
food with a fellow member of her Community Supported Agriculture share from
Common Grounds.
“I was talking with another member about the depressing
concept of cafeteria food,” says McKelvey. “He had just moved here from
Michigan and he told me to research farm to school, which is really robust in
Michigan. I started looking into it and I was fascinated by the potential.”
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With her daughter Joia in kindergarten at the time, McKelvey
was eager to plant the seeds of healthy eating early.
“I think schools have a responsibility to educate children
about responsible food choices and make sure that they have healthy options,” McKelvey
said. “Luckily, I found that schools agree. It’s just a matter of implementing
it and finding cost-effective ways to get good, local food in the cafeterias.”
McKelvey found a willing partner in her daughter’s school,
Haldane Elementary in Cold Spring. She joined their wellness committee, made
formal presentations to the powers that be about the links between nutrition
and scholastic achievement, and she persisted tirelessly in her goal to get
better food in her daughter’s school. Before she knew it, the Hudson Valley
Farm to School initiative was born, and her mission reached schools throughout
the region.
Second grade students at JV Forrestal Elementary in Beacon participate in the Chef in the Classroom program.
“By 2010, we started a small program with chefs coming to
the school to do demos of healthy food,” she says. “Initially, we had a very
small grant, but when teachers saw how much the kids loved the demos, everyone
wanted them. And because the program was small to begin with, we learned very
quickly. Now the program is in every classroom, the children learn about
featured vegetables on an academic level — its nutritional profile, the country
it originates from — in addition to creating dishes with it.”
Students from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park
visit Haldane to help children make recipes from locally grown vegetables, using
as many items pulled from the school garden as possible.
The school cafeteria then recreates the dish the chefs and
students make together and serve it in their school lunch. McKelvey recruited
Hudson Valley Seeds to donate seeds to the students’ gardens, farmers from
Common Grounds to come in and talk to students about where their food really
comes from and has arranged seasonal donations from Glynwood Farm that provide
a do-it-yourself salad bar that the kids adore.
Fourth grade students at Haldane Elementary in Cold Spring participate in the Chef in the Classroom program with chef interns from the Culinary Institute of America. Butternut squash was the featured vegetable for the day.
“Our kids look up to the CIA students as rock stars,”
McKelvey says. “They all watch the Food Network and they see these kids, who
are just 10 or 15 years older than them, making these amazing dishes and
they’re inspired. I get emails and phone calls from parents all the time
telling me about how their sons and daughters are now obsessed with kale and
beets after initially refusing to even try them at home!”
Following the pilot program, HVFS soon became a small
consulting and philanthropic business, helping the Garrison and Beacon school
districts create their own hands-on nutrition programs and getting local farm
produce and dairy into schools in the region.
Bringing locally grown, fresh foods into city and rural
school cafeterias and getting children to understand that french fries are not
the only delicious veggie (and no, they don’t come out of the ground like that),
helps ensure our children’s health and also the vibrancy of our local
economies, McKelvey says.
Kathleen Willcox is a freelance writer and mother of 2-year-old twins. She lives with her family in Schenectady.
Sandy McKelvey and her daughter, Joia.