USFA 2023 Annual Report

Best Practices 02 PILLAR CONTINUED

THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PALM BEACH COUNTY

DISTRICT HIGHLIGHT:

Enhance Local Procurement School Food Service (SFS) continues to expand upon local procurement to enhance our school lunch and breakfast programs and reduce the District’s carbon footprint. In addition to using local produce, SFS was able to utilize the Department of Defense contract to further process locally sourced whole fruit into individually cut and packaged servings for our students. Highlights for the 2022-2023 school year: Reintroduced fresh green beans (which SFS was unable to serve during the pandemic) from local Florida farm RC Hatton. Expanded cut fruit offerings from April 2, 2023 - May 12, 2023

Watermelon - 6,911 cases or 331,728 servings Cantaloupe - 4,368 cases or 15,248 servings Blueberries - 2,502 cases or 125,100 servings

Piloted an all beef, “Fresh From Florida” patty from Miami Beef with a District-wide soft launch scheduled for school year 2023-2024. The School Garden initiative continued to thrive in the 2022- 2023 school year with 138 schools reporting a school garden initiative on their campus.

THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA

DISTRICT HIGHLIGHT:

IN THE NEWS:

story quote: Study will help schools maximize student meal programs

Working with Philadelphia public schools, McLoughlin’s research team will identify middle and high schools that have varying levels of participation in school meals. The study will include assessments of existing school implementation, their successes and challenges, and reasons why students may forgo the meals. Ultimately the project will create and test interventions based on the research, designed to improve school meal participation rates. “We’re interested in hearing what students and others have to say about what could make more students want to participate in our meals program. Maybe it’s a campaign that would help reduce the stigma, help us modernize, help us to look at it with fresh eyes, maybe see an obvious thing that we don’t see,” Virus says. *Credit: Full story originally featured on Temple University: College of Public Health

CLICK HERE to read the full story

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Best Practices

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