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Date: 1/18/2018
CHICOPEE – The menu was straight out of a farm-to-table restaurant: locally sourced turkey and vegetables for a traditional turkey dinner.
The meal, though, was not being served at a private eatery, but rather the teachers’ dining room at Chicopee High School.
The meal was an opportunity for state Rep. Joseph Wagner to experience, along with School Superintendent Richard Rege and Chicopee High Principal James Blain, the ChicopeeFRESH program, in which students receive meals with meats and produce harvested within a 250 miles radius of the city.
Rege said students who eat well in a healthy fashion do better in school and he added that Director of Food Service Joanne Lennon has been honored on both the state and federal level for her innovations and programs.
Wagner told his fellow diners, which included representatives from various student groups at the high school, the Commonwealth spends about half of its budget on healthcare issues and the Chicopee program encourages people to eat healthier.
He commented that if students saw school lunches from 15 years ago and compared them to what they are offered today “they probably wouldn’t recognize it.”
Lennon said while out-sourced school lunch programs are run by companies who must make a profit, her program is not profit driven.
“We can make our own decisions,” she added.
Some aspects of farm-to-table are more expensive, she readily admitted. Meat can be more costly but she has found there can actually be a savings with vegetables. She explained that processed potatoes that would be bought through a food service would cost the district 47 cents per serving. Using locally sourced potatoes costs the schools 9 cents per serving.
Lennon added the program encourages economic development among the agricultural sector in New England and the program’s goal was to have 20 percent of the food served by the district to be local.
The Chicopee district includes 15 schools and serves 100,000 meals a month.
The Massachusetts Farm to School organization, which promoted such programs, awarded Lennon the distinction of being its “Kale Blazer” for 2017.
At the time of her award, Lennon said, “We find local products to be superior in freshness and taste, and the kids can tell the difference when we serve local food – I have high schoolers asking for seconds when we serve Hadley asparagus.”
Erin Healy, Director, Office of Community Food Systems, USDA, said, “Farm to school has multiple benefits, health benefits, economic benefits, and educational benefits. [It] reaches beyond the school environment and helps create jobs for our local farmers… for every $1spent on local food an additional $0.86 is spent in that local economy.”
The Chicopee program was mentioned as one of the outcomes in a progress report from the Henry P. Kendall Foundation that has an initiative to encourage a health food system in New England. It noted in the report, “Chicopee Schools increased sourcing of local foods from $10,000 in FY2014 to $100,000 in FY2015 to $200,000 expected by the end of FY2016.”
Lennon noted the district’s Breakfast in the Classroom program is also growing. Currently in five schools, the program has grown at Chicopee High from 120 students to 360 students.
Rege noted that for many of the city’s students – Chicopee has a poverty rate of 70 percent – the food they receive at school is probably “the best and healthiest food they get in the day or week.”