The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future recognized the Baltimore City Public Schools last month with the 2009 CLF Award for “Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education” in hopes of encouraging school districts across the nation to initiate their own school lunch reforms.
Mathew Yale, Deputy Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Education, told Geraci he’s most interested in learning about how the school system made so many changes without a significant increase in federal or state funding. Geraci says it takes a lot of hard work, ingenuity, and luck. Much of the equipment he’s received came through grants or donations. The trucks and milk coolers were a $1.3 million gift from the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association. But Geraci says if the feds gave the school system more freedom to spend federal dollars to purchase produce, his office would be able to buy a great deal more local fruits and veggies. His favorite example of typical waste inherent in the system is comparing the cost of locally grown apples to apples trucked from states as far away as Washington, almost 3,000 miles from Baltimore. A case of Maryland apples costs the Baltimore City Public Schools about $6, while a case of government-approved apples costs them about $56. Geraci says, “it’s outrageous! Why would we spend almost ten times as much money for food that we can grow in our own backyard?” He says, “it not only saves the City Schools money, it puts cash back into the local economy.”
Incorporating Meatless Monday into this year’s lunch menu plans, Geraci says, was another innovative cost cutting measure. The move not only saves the district money but it serves as an educational tool as well. Meatless Monday gives the school system an opportunity to expose students to different cultures, Geraci says, through various meat-free recipes and meals from around the world. U.S. meat industry lobbyists quickly grumbled about Baltimore’s lack of meat options on Mondays, inferring that the meals may lack proper nutrition and claiming menu decisions should be left to the experts not administrators. If the lobbyists had bothered to talk to the person who came up with the idea, Melissa Mahoney, they would have learned that she is a dietitian and that she ensured each meal surpassed all USDA required nutrition standards. Jokingly, Geraci testified in front of House Education and Labor committee members that he had “an unholy love of pork,” but he insisted that, “[Meatless Monday] is not about denying people meat. This is about beginning a conversation about alternatives… beginning a conversation about change.”
Read the full article at Civil Eats!
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