Witchcraft Heights Selected For Farm-To-School Institute

SALEM, MA – Witchcraft Heights Elementary School was recently selected for the third annual Northeast Farm to School Institute. Witchcraft Heights will advance their initiatives in food, farm, and nutrition education through the institute, while serving local products in the school cafeteria.

Witchcraft Heights was one of 12 teams selected for the institute. Participating schools are used as model programs in their states for other school districts. The institute is hosted by Vermont Food Education Every Day (Vermont FEED).

Farm to School in the Northeast is reaching nearly two million students, and Northeast schools spent nearly $70 million on local foods in one year, according to the USDA Farm to School Census. Farm to School helps grow the region’s economy, not only as a market opportunity for farmers and producers, but also to help grow future generations of consumers tied to local products. Farm to school also improves our children’s health by increasing their consumption of fruits and vegetables — a recognized obesity prevention strategy. Additionally, Farm to School helps reduce childhood hunger by contributing to the expansion and success of school nutrition programs.

"This is an exciting opportunity to help Witchcraft and the district create a long term plan," said project leader Kelly Cronin, a Special Education teacher at Witchcraft Heights. "By participating in the Northeast Farm to School Institute, we hope to tie together school curricula, school gardens and school meals programming; create a cohesive local food and wellness policy; and, create an internal agri-business that will sell greens to the district’s Food Services Department year-round as well as maintain all school gardens and create student-driven promotions for healthy, fresh garden produce."

The team representing Salem includes: Cronin, Deborah Jeffers, director of Food & Nutrition Services, Patrice Toomey, program manager for Food & Nutrition Services and Leeann Gibney, head chef for the district.

Beginning with a summer workshop at Shelburne Farms, the Salem Public Schools food service staff, teachers, administrators, and community partners will meet with peers and experts in the field to expand their understanding and practices of Farm to School and develop a farm to school action plan for the coming school year. The schools are matched with an experienced Farm to School coach to help the school implement their plan. The plans integrate best practices into school programs, such as farm visits, gardening and cooking activities, serving seasonal foods in school cafeterias, and offering food-based, hands-on science, math, and literacy lessons.
The Northeast Farm to School Institute has supported the development of Farm to School programs at 62 schools and districts, reaching over 38,000 students from the Northeast.

Highlight accomplishments from last year’s Institute school teams include: Increasing local procurement of seafood including lobster, clams and scallops (Seabrook School District, NH); developing a community-wide Grow-a-Row program in the school gardens (Newbury Elementary, VT); creating hydroponic gardens in the school cafeteria (New London, CT); establishing a fresh fruit and vegetable grab-n-go snack option (Vernon-Verona-Sherril Schools, NY); establishing garden-based capstone projects for AP environmental science classes (Holyoke High School, MA); and construction of a school sugarhouse (Lyndon Institute, VT). It comes as no surprise that Northeast states are in the top 15 percent of farm to school participation efforts nationally, according to the recently released USDA Farm to School survey.

The 2017-2018 Northeast Farm to School Institute has school teams from all seven Northeast states. The twelve participating schools are: Berlin Elementary School (Berlin, VT), Vermont School for Girls (Bennington, VT), Harwood Union High School (Moretown, VT), Springfield School District (Springfield, VT), Providence Public School District (Providence, RI), Johnson City Central School District (Johnson City, NY), Saranac Lake Middle School (Saranac Lake, NY), Nashua, NH School District (Nashua NH), Witchcraft Heights Elementary School (Salem, MA), Albert S. Hall School (Waterville, ME), Charles Barnum Elementary School (Groton, CT), and Mayberry Elementary (East Hartford, CT).

To learn more about the Northeast Farm to School Institute, visit www.vtfeed.org.

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