PAHF members were able to visit Santa Monica High School on April 25 to see the new equipment in action. The high quality, multi-leveled ovens, steamers, grills and cooktops were up and running. The fresh, homemade salad pictured is a new one they are testing out and will appear on the menu soon.
sweetgreen Success!
sweetgreen, a destination for simple, seasonal, healthy food opened on Montana on February 22, 2019. Every time sweetgreen opens a new location, they give 100% of their opening day profits to a local organization to help make an impact on the health of the local community.
Santa Monica’s Parents Advocating Healthy Food Chair (PAHF) Harriet Fraser, Roosevelt PTA President, Rebecca Terlizzi, along with SMMUSD’s Food Service Director, Richard Marchini worked with sweetgreen to be chosen as that local organization.
$6,000 from the opening day was donated to both Roosevelt Elementary and Franklin Elementary to help build sustainable gardens. These gardens will focus on teaching students about living a healthy lifestyle and developing healthy eating habits.
It has been shown that, children who plant and harvest their own vegetables are more willing to taste and even like them. Gardening is also an excellent way to provide children with moderate exercise and another opportunity to take learning out of the classroom.
NEW EQUIPMENT IN PLACE
The equipment that we advocated for in the summer of 2018 is now in place, with scratch cooking now round the corner! Staff are being trained right now and the first fully scratch cooked meal from the new equipment will be on menus on February 28th, 2019.
Sweetgreen partnership
We are excited to announce that SWEETGREEN have chosen PAHF/SMMUSD as their impact partners for their Montana Ave store opening on February 11th. 100% Profits for the entire day will go towards developing learning gardens at the Rosevelt and Franklin Elementary School sites.
Board Meeting Success!!
We presented at the June 14th Board meeting, with parents, teachers and students talking to the board about how important it is for students to be eating healthy food each and every day. We took in upwards of 800 paper plates that students had decorated with the healthy food they would like to see in the cafeteria.
On 28th June, this became an 'action' item on the agenda. The board had to decide whether to earmark $700,000 towards revamping the menu completely and to move towards scratch cooking at Santa Monica High School and Malibu High School. This would pay for updating equipment, training, transport and menu development and uniforms for staff.
THE BOARD PASSED THE MEASURE.
We are incredibly excited about this, and feel it is an excellent first step to making huge changes in the menus in SMMUSD going forward.
Launch of our Paper Plate Campaign
At the suggestion of our Edison Language Academy active member and Mom Maria Loya, we have launched the Paper Plate Campaign. Students, teachers and parents are writing on paper plates, their hopes for our cafeteria system going forward. These will be brought to and displayed at the upcoming board meeting to show how passionate this community is for change in this area.
Meeting with Food Services Director, Richard Marchini
Excellent meeting with RM this week, Tuesday 1st May. 2 hour meeting consisted of his presentation of his vision and question and answers with 20 parents from every school in the district.
Hot news is that he goes to the board June 14th to get $600,000 to equip 2 schools (one in SM and one in Malibu) to start full scratch cooking with the start of the new 2018-19 school year. Food in the other sites will improve but with a view to rolling out scratch cooking gradually to all sites over the next 3 years if pilot is deemed a success.