News : Vinton-Shellsburg Clarifies Goals of the Farm To School Program

The Farm-To-School (F2S) program was created to provide healthy options for students and to achieve that goal by sourcing food locally, and by training school staff to use recipes that include scratch cooking. During a recent training for food service staff, the representative from an organization providing training for scratch meal preparation in institutional foodservice made statements to area media that do not reflect the current policies or intent of Vinton-Shellsburg's F2S program.

Statements made by the trainer to the media caused many patrons significant confusion and concern, and as a result, school officials met on Monday with representatives of several local commodity groups to provide accurate information about the school's F2S program.

The school district, along with representatives of the Benton County agricultural community, established shared statements describing goals for the F2S program and the district's continued participation in locally sourced food. Those statements include:

• We want healthy options for our students within the food service program.
• We want our students to be healthy.
• We endorse quality training for our food service staff to assist them in their jobs.
• We support local producers and want strong partnerships with commodity groups.
• We work to provide accurate information.

According to school superintendent MaryJo Hainstock, the meeting provided the opportunity to keep communication open and to express the district's commitment to the broader school community. "I appreciated the opportunity to meet with representatives of our area agricultural community and for the opportunity to speak clearly to these issues. Building and maintaining productive relationships with our communities is an important goal embraced by the district's board of education. I appreciate the willingness of patrons to discuss the media coverage and to arrive at a shared understanding."

From the Superintendent's Desk,

The Vinton-Shellsburg Community School District hosted training last week for our food service staff. It was coordinated by our UNI Sustainability AmeriCorps volunteer and included participants from other school districts.

The group that had offered to do the training was Forward Food. The district was not fully aware of the specific subject matter or the fact there was such a close connected to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). They contacted media representatives who covered the event and interviewed the trainer and an AmeriCorps volunteer.

Based on some media's reporting, we have fielded questions and concerns about the school's intention for the training and our food service program.

As I have responded to the questions and concerns, I have focused on the following:

VSCSD and our Farm-to-School program have a goal of promoting more locally sourced food - and through the F2S work, we have purchased more locally sourced meat, apples and other products. VSCSD and our F2S program have a second goal of helping our food service staff receive training on preparing more scratch-cooking items. The training we provided last week was based on this. VSCSD works to provide options for our students as a part of the food service program. This includes offering a salad bar at every building with a variety of fruits and vegetables, offering more than one entrée at the high school, and rotating a variety of recipes through the menucycle. In the media coverage, the trainer mentioned replacing meat with a plant-based item one day a week. No one from the school said this and there is no intention to do this. The presenter misleadingly tied this workshop to other, already-established efforts to promote the use of locally grown foods in the school lunch programs in Benton County. They implied that their information about plant-based diets was a continuation of such efforts; it was not. VSCSD has a partnership with the University of Northern Iowa and its sustainability program. Through this partnership we have an AmeriCorps volunteer (not a school employee) who is working on sustainability efforts in the food service program - reducing waste, starting to compost, etc. She planned and promoted the workshop. The media report improperly reported she is a direct employee of the district and implied that she was speaking on behalf of the district. VSCSD has no intention of implementing a meatless meals effort within our food service program. We are disappointed the Humane Society of the United States gave the impression we are; we do not plan to continue a relationship with them. In the future, we will be more diligent about vetting the intentions of outside presenters before they provide training or materials to our staff, students and/or families.

On Monday morning I met with representatives from several commodity groups. I appreciate their interest in opening the lines of communication, the desire to provide accurate information, and their motivation to serve all students in the best way possible. We agreed on the following:

We want healthy options for our students within the food service program. We want our students to be healthy. We endorse quality training for our food service staff to assist them in their jobs. We support local producers and want strong partnerships with commodity groups. We work to provide accurate information.

The representatives from the groups shared resources that could support our students and staff. This includes training for our food service staff, grants for purchasing ingredients for our high school foods class, or educational resources for classroom teachers.

Our Farm to School chapter was formed several years ago with the vision to provide healthy options for our students and the members have been passionate about making that happen. The work has included purchasing from local producers and this has included pork, apples, vegetables and other items; offering training for food service staff to learn how to prepare new recipes; developing partnerships with local vendors; and educating students and others about their work. The group is always looking for more members and I would encourage anyone interested to become active in the group.

Moving forward, we want to be a strong partner with patrons, parents, students, staff, commodity groups and others. We will work together in a manner that demonstrates respect for each other as well as the community we live in as we prepare our students for their futures.

Mary Jo Hainstock,

Superintendent