The Oxford School District has been making a vast number of improvements to the nutritional and educational values of food within its schools.
In 2013, the school district initiated a program called Good Food for Oxford Schools. The program incorporates local foods into the cafeteria menus while also educating students about the food they are consuming. GFOS has educated students about their food by implementing principles of the National Farm to School Network.
Sunny Young, the GFOS program coordinator, said these measures are primarily aimed at connecting kids to where their food comes from and to the farming community.
“You can put a beautiful plate in front of a student, but they are not going to eat it if there’s no education or marketing piece,” Young said.
Kids are connected to local farmers through field trips, in-class taste testing with farmers and by growing their own gardens at each school.
“Farm to School is one of the best ways to get kids to eat more vegetables because it’s fun, and you make a connection with your food,” Young said. “We want to start working with our younger ones with these projects to get their pallets adjusted to fresh fruits and vegetables so that they don’t have to worry about that when they’re adults.”
Two years ago, the schools started doing “Harvest of the Month,” where a local food item was introduced every month on the lunch menu. Young said she really wants to see local foods becoming a staple at every meal, but this is limited by local food availability.
Trying to get local fruits and vegetables for the students is a growing pain, Young said. She believes the money spent to outsource for food could be better spent right here in Oxford and surrounding communities.
“We could really be investing so much more of this money into this economy if more farmers bought in to this program,” said Young. “We’re losing young farmers rapidly in this state.”
Foodcorp service members have also been introduced into the Oxford School District within the last year through the GFOS program.
Foodcorp member Mary Elizabeth Smithson is working hard to educate kids about what they are eating by using school gardens. “When kids start growing stuff for themselves, they are way more likely to eat it,” Smithson said.
Almost all of the schools in the Oxford School District have their own garden, with the exception of Oxford Intermediate School and Oxford Middle School.
Smithson said she hopes to see those schools have gardens soon as well, but it’s just a matter of getting everyone on board. “I really want to see more teachers and administration involved in the gardens.”
Oxford Middle School and Oxford High School have clubs dedicated to food that have started their own gardens without the help of Foodcorp services.
The clubs are also geared towards learning how to cook, which Young noted as an essential part of students taking care of their health. The schools have also partnered with the University’s Nutrition and Dietetics Program to bring UM students out to help with cooking and nutrition lessons.
Local chefs have also participated in the clubs, and there are rumors floating around about a culinary program at the Oxford High School.
One of Young’s biggest goals since she started GFOS four years ago was to get salad bars in all of the schools in the district.
Now, every school cafeteria except Oxford Elementary offers a salad bar. The dressings at the salad bar are all made completely from scratch, thanks to the Oxford School District’s chef, Karen Irby.
But Irby, an experienced and well-rounded chef, has improved far more than just the salad dressings in the schools. She has revamped the menus to not only make the food in the cafeterias more nutritious, but also make them taste better.
“I can take any recipe and make it nutritious,” said Irby. “I didn’t change anything that was in the recipe, just how it was put together, so that the flavoring is different in your palate.”
The only thing she has to do is follow the FDA and USDA guidelines. “As long as the ingredients are approved, you can make any recipe you want,” Irby said.
According to Irby, 50-100 more students are eating from the cafeteria now than they were at the beginning of the year.
Irby is also a member of the U.S. Pizza team, and is ranked ninth in the World. She hopes by the end of October to start making pizzas from scratch.
Her goal for the end of the year is to start pattying their own hamburgers.
The only problem that arises in the midst of all of these improvements is the lack of awareness from the students at each school.
Irby stated that they have not really been spreading the word about the changes yet, mainly because some of these changes are slow. “My issue is that I’m only one person and we have six schools.”
Some students may not be aware of or affected by the changes being implemented in their cafeterias. Many of them have pre-existing ideas about what the cafeteria food tastes like, and are not as willing to try it.
When asked her opinion on cafeteria food, Oxford High School freshman Taylor Everett shrugged her shoulders and said, “We don’t eat school lunch.”
Similarly, Renee Joyce, who has two children in the Oxford School District, said she knows her kids didn’t like the taste of the food and considered the ingredients from which the meals are made questionable.
It wasn’t until she attended the Lunch Tray Town Hall Meeting on September 29th that she learned about all of the improvements within the school’s cafeterias.
“I think it’s outstanding. I had no idea coming in here tonight that all this is going on. I’m excited, and I think my kids– especially the one in high school– will be excited to try the salad bar. I know her and none of her friends buy lunch,” Joyce said.
Joyce also said after attending the meeting she was going to get her kids to try eating lunch at school, and was also excited about the fact that the kids are getting educated about the foods they are eating.
“I’ve never heard of a school district go this far to educate the kids to get them to eat healthy.”
