A school cafeteria seems an unlikely destination for a tasty meal—unless you’re eating at the Lagunitas Community School, where the food this year is fresh, local and 100 percent organic.
Students who turned their noses up at the old menu offerings have been lining up to eat meals prepared from scratch in the school’s revamped kitchen, now run by a professional pastry chef who graduated from the school more than two decades ago.
“I never ate school lunch last year, but now I eat it every day,” Hugo Schujman, a seventh grader, said as he polished off a plate of veggie fried rice last week. “It’s so much more flavorful, and there’s so much variety.”
Last year, the school served about 10 breakfasts and 25 lunches on a typical day. This year, the numbers have skyrocketed, with around 68 kids lining up for breakfast and 112 for lunch, according to Christina Ortega, the school finance director. The meals are free to all 161 students at the school, which serves students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
The program was launched in partnership with Conscious Kitchen, a Marin County nonprofit with an ambitious goal: bringing organic food to every school in the state. The organization began serving organic meals at the Sausalito-Marin City School District in 2013, and six years later began scaling up a similar program in the West Contra Costa County School District, where the food is now 50 percent organic and on its way to 100 percent.
Shoreline Unified School District has begun formulating plans with Conscious Kitchen, and the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District has expressed interest in starting a similar program.
Conscious Kitchen negotiates bulk deals with farmers and other food suppliers. At Lagunitas, a one-time state grant provided funds for upgrading the kitchen equipment, and additional money came from a state fund supporting schools that move toward organic menus.
Last week, Lagunitas students did not need to be admonished to eat their veggies. In fact, they did so with gusto. The stir fry offered a palate-pleasing palette—green edamame, orange carrots, yellow corn, red peppers. A side dish of purple-cabbage salad added extra pop, and a trio of glistening orange slices on each plate added even more zing.
Nothing was soggy, nothing was greasy. Everything was just right.
“We try to hit all the colors of the rainbow,” said chef Meggan Arnoux, who lives in the valley and graduated from Lagunitas School in 1991. “To me, eating good food is as important as math.”
Before taking on her new job at the school, she worked as a private chef and ran the Valley Baking Company, a purveyor of fine granola and biscotti. She runs the kitchen with the help of her friend, neighbor and able sous chef, Meghan Martino, a large-scale event organizer well suited to the task of managing hordes of hungry kids.
While the two cooks can’t agree on how to spell their name, they are in sync when it comes to nutritious food. They are assisted by a team of middle-school food ambassadors who serve the meals with pride and gain experience that will prove valuable if they ever seek restaurant employment.
“The food is amazing,” Cyrus Green, a sixth grader, said as he donned a green apron before the first batch of students arrived last Thursday. “When you eat it, the flavors just explode in your mouth. It feels like your taste buds are celebrating.”
Thor Townsend, a fellow ambassador, piled on some more superlatives. “This might even be better than the food at restaurants that I’ve gone to,” he said. “It’s high quality, it’s fresh, it’s organic, and it’s delicious.”
Kids being kids, pizza remains the most popular item on the menu. This year it’s served on a fine focaccia-style crust from the Acme Bread Company, along with ranch dressing made from scratch. (No mayonnaise, Ms. Arnoux stressed, ever mindful of federal nutritional guidelines.)
On occasion, when the budget permits, the diners partake of organic, grass-fed burgers from Stemple Creek Ranch, another favorite offering.
Nothing is wasted. Whatever remains from one day is incorporated into the next day’s meals. The bulk of the program is financed by federal and state reimbursements that provide $3.34 per child for breakfast, and $5.40 for lunch.
As the kids lined up for their plates last week, Principal Jenelle Ferhart looked on approvingly. “This never happened last year,” she said, watching the line grow. “It’s completely changed the culture of the school. The teachers tell me the kids are less grumpy when they return to class.”
The program has also made life easier for harried moms and dads who no longer need to pack lunches and prepare breakfast. “It’s having a ripple effect,” said Allison Faust, who has a son at the school and a daughter who just graduated. “Parents are having a much less stressful time in the morning.”
The breakfast menu is enough to get even the laziest adolescent out of bed and to school on time. It features fresh-baked muffins on Fridays with whatever fresh berries are available, and the overnight oats are always dressed up with something special—an apple-pear compote last week, with a wee touch of maple syrup on top. The granola, a specialty of Ms. Arnoux’s, comes with yogurt from Straus Family Creamery, most recently with pomegranate seeds on top and Bing cherries on the bottom.
Parents at the school have been advocating for a program like this for a long time, and this year things finally fell into place.
“A lot of things need to line up in the school administration for something like this to happen,” said Traci Prendergrast, a parent, former chef and nutritionist who was involved in getting the program started. “The principal needs to be on board, the business officer needs to be on board, and so does the superintendent.”
As it happens, all three supported the plan both last year and this year, when Kathleen Graham came aboard as superintendent and Ms. Ferhart took the reins as principal.
Before the program began, most kids brought their lunch and scattered around the school grounds, eating in small groups or forgetting to eat at all, too busy enjoying the break from class to open their lunch box. This year, parents decorated the multipurpose room, giving it more of a café feel, and kids sit down together.
“We’ve witnessed a change beyond any expectations I might have had,” Ms. Prendergrast said. “There’s something very powerful in eating together. It’s important to break bread together. It’s important for how we nourish ourselves, and it’s important for community.”
Conscious Kitchen’s co-founder, Judi Shils, finds inspiration in the work of Alice Waters, the famed Berkeley chef who sits on the nonprofit’s board and has made a crusade of bringing healthy food to schools nationwide.
“I want Kamala Harris to institute this nationally,” Ms. Waters told the Light. “We need to do this for our health, for our climate and for the next generation. It really works to just eat local food and buy it directly. We’ve been doing this at Chez Panisse for 50 years. It’s great for the farmers, and it’s great for the kids.”