Kids need protein in school breakfasts
By Julie Holbrook
As we all head back to school, let me tell you what’s top of mind for me. I’m a school food service professional and an AFT member who works hard to make sure only the freshest food goes into our school meals — preferably, straight from the school garden and local farms.
What is most important for our students right now, and what I want most to start off this school year right, is for every student to have protein with their school breakfast. A bit of protein — eggs, yogurt or cheese — powers kids for the whole day. It gives them slow, steady fuel and helps them learn.
We’ve heard for a long time that breakfast is the most important meal of the day — to the point where both children and adults toss it off with an eye roll, saying, “Breakfast is the most important blah blah blah.” But it’s true. And just as crucial is what you eat for breakfast.
For me, it’s all about protein. Even though Congress has made strides in raising nutritional standards, our schools still lack the equipment and tools we need to prepare healthier meals from scratch. I’d love to see the U.S. Department of Agriculture require that school breakfasts include lean protein. Even pastries labeled “whole grain,” along with fruit juices, can create a “sugar high” followed by a crash and lay the groundwork for diabetes. My mission is to nourish children, not the profits of the processed food and pharmaceutical industries.
Locally grown foods, minimally processed, are best for kids and best for the climate. What we serve for breakfast includes hard-boiled eggs, fruit smoothies, or yogurt straight from the farm in five-gallon buckets, flavored with local honey and granola that we make ourselves. The children love it.
A school garden stipend
Let me tell you how we got here. I embarked on this journey in 2007, as a cafeteria worker at a small public school in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. It took years, but we changed students’ processed meals to food made from scratch, including making our own bread. Now we use every type of local fruit, vegetable, meat and dairy, all from nearby farms.
At Keene Central School, they already had a school garden and a composting program that I helped make bigger and better. Thanks to my union contract negotiated through the Keene Central School District Support Staff Association, I was paid a stipend to care for our school garden over the summer. That seemingly small part of the contract not only gave me hope that I could get things done for our kids, but it also gave me the power to do it.
Still a proud member of the New York State United Teachers, today I am an employee of the Champlain Valley Educational Services. I buy local food for seven public schools and share with them my love of food and nutrition, which comes from hands-on cultivation and watering our school gardens.
Big ideas into big results
We don’t just cultivate the soil, either. Right from the start, together with the help of a local foundation, we bought equipment and built a greenhouse to extend our growing season. At one of our schools, athletic director and teacher Lee Silvernail took over the school garden and now he even keeps chickens that live in a henhouse and run around a fenced-in yard on school grounds.
We have so many amazing partners that I can’t even tell you how supported we feel. Cornell Cooperative Extension Service of Essex County has gotten us grants for farm-to-school meat and produce, as well as providing guidance. Also, the health departments of Essex and Clinton counties helped us write our wellness policies, and gave our schools a blender to make smoothies, breakfast carts to serve high school students, and a glass-front cooler for serving healthy snacks. It’s a pretty cool thing.
School food service workers have an important job. In two meals each day, we strive to give kids all the nutrition they need that day. From the start, I’ve said school meals can be delicious, healthy and inexpensive. I haven’t changed my mind. In fact, I feel even stronger today that a food service worker, just as much as a parents or teacher, can be the deciding factor in a student’s success.
NYSUT member Julie Holbrook is a school food service manager who gets local foods onto students’ plates. She feels strongly that healthy food is incredibly important now more than ever in our public schools, and that protein needs to be made a requirement in school breakfasts. She is a proud member of the Keene Central School District Support Staff Association.
Want to keep up with what school and college support staff like you are doing to improve the lives of their students? Check out AFT Voices for paraprofessionals and school-related personnel.
