Meet the Leaders Transforming School Meals

“What is your favorite school lunch back home?”

That was the icebreaker question from the first-ever meeting of our Farm to School Leadership Academy, a cohort of school nutrition professionals, educators, and farm to school coordinators, who know a thing or two about school meals. 

“Puffed, breaded tofu with ginger garlic sauce.” “Harvest quesadillas with tofu, vegetables, and polenta fries.” “Baked purple pole beans with bacon”. School meals look a little different these days, thanks to a focus on nourishing kids and using fresh, local ingredients.

This Shelburne Farms professional learning program, offered in partnership with the National Farm to School Network (NFSN), supported sixteen school leaders from across the country in 2024–25 to transform their school meal programs by connecting what we call the 3Cs: the classroom, cafeteria, and community.

“Investing in farm to school leaders is crucial right now,” says Sunny Baker, NFSN Senior Director of Programs & Policy. “What we saw during the pandemic shows us how critical school meals and farm to school are, and that these programs are able to make big changes very quickly in order to make sure children are well fed.”

The cohort spent the year digging into shared challenges and learning from one another as they tackled big dilemmas:

• How do we get more local food into school meals?
• How can we connect students  to where their food comes from?
• How can we be effective change agents and build peer learning networks? 

Watch to hear how the Farm to School Leadership Academy made a difference in the work of four participants, and read more about the work they’re doing this school year and beyond:

Director of Sustainability & School Food
Academy for Global Citizenship, Chicago, Illinois

What Kris is Working on

This spring, Kris launched a new enterprise in her school, Little Leaf Market. It’s a hub for sharing local and school-grown produce with students and the community. This year, she’ll be expanding the reach of the market, using it to provide summer meals as part of the federal National School Lunch Program. Eventually, they’ll be able to accept families’ SNAP benefits to increase the accessibility of sustainably and locally grown/made products.

In 2023, Kris transitioned the Academy for Global Citizenship from an externally operated meal program to a self-operated. This allowed them more decision-making power about their meals: like serving scratch-made meals and prioritizing values-aligned purchasing of locally grown and humanely raised ingredients from across the Midwest. Kris learned a lot about the National School Lunch Program through this transition, including how tricky the options were to navigate. “It was really timely for me to participate in the Farm to School Leadership Academy because if we're going to transform how we feed young people in public schools at a systems level, we need a shared understanding of the diversity of school food programs across the country. Without that shared understanding, it’s really hard to choose the right method for your context.” To that end, Kris is working toward creating a map of the National School Lunch Program to help us all be more effective in our efforts to implement farm to school.

Food Service Director, River Valley Local School & Cardington-Lincoln Local School Districts, Marion and Morrow Counties, Ohio & Farm Coordinator, River Valley Local Schools, Caledonia, Ohio

What Brent is Working on

Brent leads “The Lunch Bunch”, a team of food service professionals providing nutritious meals and nutrition education year round in two counties, serving ages 3–100 via public schools and Council on Aging programs. This school year, he is partnering with a local meat processor to provide weekly center-of-the-plate proteins in these meal programs.

As Farm Coordinator for the local schools, Brent manages the “RV F.A.R.M.” (Fresh - Accessible - Resourceful – Mindful), a two-acre farm and outdoor learning center. Students help grow fruits and vegetables for the school cafeterias while learning sustainable and agricultural practices. “Schools tend to focus on manufacturing,  going off to college, or serving your country, but they still need to focus on educating students about farming to make sure that there are kids who know how to provide for the rest of the community for years to come.” Brent is expanding the learning opportunities at the farm, including hydroponic grow towers, afterschool garden clubs, cooking clubs, and even providing space for animals and offering husbandry lessons for middle school students.

Education Program Manager
Houston Independent School District, Houston, Texas

What Phyllicia is Working on

The Houston Independent School District is the eighth largest in the U.S., with 247 schools and 160 school gardens—making it a big challenge to build and maintain sustainable farm to school programs across the district. “I want to use farm to school to transform the food system and bridge the opportunity gaps. Because it's not just academics, and it's not just food and nutrition. It's a combination of both. We knew there were gaps prior to covid, but the world got to see it during covid. Now that we're post covid, some parts of the world forgot, but people are still dealing with health and educational disparities.”

Phyllicia is working to create an agricultural and nutrition curriculum aligned with Texas learning standards. Additionally, she’s building training models to support educators in better utilizing the school gardens, which include a districtwide handbook for planting, food safety, and garden-to-cafeteria processes.

In such a large district, measuring what works best is key for scaling across all schools, and central to Phyllicia’s work is reporting on the impact of these tools to inform future districtwide policy, staffing, and infrastructure decisions.

Assistant Director of Food & Nutrition Services, Chesterfield County Public Schools, Virginia & President-Elect, School Nutrition Association of Virginia

What Casey is Working on

Farm to school is in a foundational phase at Chesterfield County Public Schools, and Casey has launched small pilot programs to lay the groundwork for expansion across the district. One such pilot is a booth at a local farmers’ market, where staff offer free scratch-made, local dishes for children and families. They share the recipes, too, so families can recreate the meals at home using ingredients from the market vendors.

“As a kid, my dad had a fairly large garden, and my grandfather was a small farmer. Both my parents worked, so we ate a lot of processed foods, but we also had a bounty of fresh produce. I was fortunate to have those fresh foods, and I want to ensure that all kids have access to good, local, healthy food. I want to make the food system as equitable as possible in my community—that’s where I can make an impact.”

This year, Casey is building on those pilot programs and bringing more local foods into the cafeteria.  She’s launching a districtwide Harvest of the Month program to highlight Virginia-grown produce in all 68 schools, and piloting a self-serve, local fruit and vegetable bar at an elementary school. Piece by piece, the enthusiasm for farm to school is growing in Chesterfield, strengthening the systems needed to make farm to school sustainable for the long term.

We're launching the second annual Farm to School Leadership Academy this fall! Congratulations to this year’s cohort:

• Amanda Warren, Staunton City, VA
• AnaAlicia Cruz, CT
• Britte Harder, Greeley, CO
• Carsen Daniel, Austin, TX
• Habraham Lopez, Pharr, TX
• Hannah Rion, Binghamton, NY
• Ian Rose, Windsor, VT
• Jeffery Murrie, Florence, SC
• Jenny Flowers, Urbana, IL
• Kelsey Pennington, National City, CA
• Kimberly Hughes, Tolland, CT
• Leila Tunnell, Amherst, MA
• Marcus Glenn, Houston, TX
• Roberto Gonzalez, Forest Park, IL
• Steve Hed, Putney, VT
• Veronica Jalomo, Crown Point, IN