The D.C. Farm to School Network works to get more healthy, locally-grown, sustainable foods into Washington, DC school meals.

Tools & Resources for school meal programs:

D.C. Farm to School Directory – Lists contact information and brief details about schools interested to buy from local farms, and local farms interested to sell to schools.

Monthly Food Services Newsletter – Keeps school food service professionals up to date on local and national farm to school and school food news, updates and events.  Contact Andrea at andrea[at]dcfarmtoschool.org to get on the list.

D.C. School Lunch 101 – Briefly discusses how school lunch works in Washington, DC, including where the money comes from, who makes decisions, and how meals are served.

D.C. Farm to School Toolkit – Helps schools think through ways to incorporate local food into school meals (published in 2009).

School Meals in the Healthy Schools Act – Explains the school meals requirements and incentives in the Healthy Schools Act (published 2010)

Healthy Food for Healthy Students Workshop – In April 2012 we hosted a Farm to School Workshop with OSSE & DCPS, where schools learned how to get everyone on board with healthy, farm-fresh food.  Read more here.  Past workshops include the Healthy School Meals Workshop in 2009 and the Healthy Schools Act Workshop in 2010.

Buyer-grower meetings - We coordinate educational field trips and opportunities for farmers and school food service professionals to directly connect.  Our last trip was to the Eastern Shore, where we visited with growers, processors, and distributors of locally-grown food.  Read more here.

What’s cooking? Here are some profiles of school meal programs with flourishing farm to school programs in Washington, DC.

D.C. Central Kitchen’s Fresh Start Catering – Currently DC Central Kitchen prepares meals for seven D.C. public schools and one private school (Washington Jesuit Academy). Their from-scratch meals use as much fresh, local products as possible, primarily from the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction in Dayton, VA. Additionally, the program employs ex-offenders and former homeless individuals who’ve turned their lives around through DCCK’s culinary job training program. Read more here, and check out their photos from the produce auction here.

Photo: Fresh Start staff process SVPA produce at Kelly Miller Middle School, from the D.C. Central Kitchen’s Flickr Photostream

CentroNia/D.C. Bilingual Public Charter School – Food Service Director Beatriz Zuluaga and Nutritionist Sofia Bustos took over the food service program from a contracted provider two years ago, and hired staff to make 600 delicious, healthy meals from scratch using entirely fresh, unprocessed ingredients every day. Their meals are served in CentroNia‘s pre-school programs (including before and after care) and in D.C. Bilingual Public Charter School meals. Their three salad bars feature fresh, local produce from Kilmer’s Farm & Orchard in West Virginia. The school’s garden, managed by City Blossoms, features some of the same fruits and veggies served in the cafeteria.

Photo: Farmer David Marvel from Delaware unloads local watermelon, cauliflower and broccoli at CentroNia (by Christiana Aretta, Storiography)

E.W. Stokes Public Charter School – Under the careful eye of Lisa Dobbs, E.W. Stokes serves fresh, from-scratch meals to its 250 students. They purchase local produce and buy free-range ground beef from the Shenandoah Valley!  They receive donated produce from the Washington Youth Garden and E.W. Stokes’ own school garden also grows some of the produce for the salad bar, which kids absolutely love!

Photo: Derek Kilmer’s apples being sliced for a local apple taste test (by Christiana Aretta, Storiography)

D.C. Public Schools – This year you’ll find a number of fresh, local foods on D.C. Public School cafeteria trays. DCPS has three vendors providing a total of about 75,000 meals/day for their students at 126 schools. Chartwells-Thompsons serves the majority of DCPS schools, and sources local foods primarily from the produce distributor Keany Produce. Typical local products include pears, apples, sweet potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes and more. Revolution Foods and D.C. Central Kitchen serve 7 schools each, and include at least 20% local foods in DCPS school meals as defined in the DCPS contract language. Learn more about DCPS school meals on the Food Services website.

Photo: A DCPS lunch of “Cajun Chicken” with local vegetable medley of zucchini & broccoli with a local fresh pear (by The Slow Cook)