Adding Some Roughage to the Charter School Diet

Red Bank Charter School has promised to change the way children are educated by focusing on experiences and developing partnerships. Now, the Oakland Street school is turning its attention to the way they eat.

In the school cafeteria Thursday morning, select students, dressed in white chef’s coats, discussed nutrition, healthy lifestyles, and the newest addition to the lunch room: a salad bar.

Through a grant from the Great American Salad Bar Project and partnership with Whole Foods of Middletown, the charter school was able to secure a new salad bar and a stock of fresh fruits and vegetables each day of the week to help foster a new spirit of healthy eating among its students.

As part if its program, Sprout into Spring, the charter school has developed a new approach to nutrition, not only aimed at changing the way children eat, but how they approach food.

Principal Meredith Pennotti believes it’s working already.

“You would have thought Santa Claus came,” she said about the day the salad bar was brought in. “The children and parents were enthused, as if a present had been delivered.

“This isn’t just about the childhood obesity issue. This is about having the little ones make different choices as they go through life.”

The goal is to make eating healthy not a chore, and not an alternative to eating in whatever capacity conflicts with healthy, but to make it the first option when children think about grabbing a bite.

With special days set aside, like Water Wednesdays, when the students and staff of the charter school pledge to only drink water – this means cutting out teacher’s coffee – and Fruit Friday, Pennotti said making healthy decisions can become habitual. It’s all part of an ongoing process of the charter school to enrich the lives of its students.

“We don’t start and stop at Red Bank Charter,” she said. “We have hit a lot of roadblocks, but we keep going.”

At a tabled lined with healthy afterschool snacking alternatives to that all-to available bag of chips, Aliyyah Godsey said part of what it takes to live a healthy lifestyle is learning what a healthy lifestyle actually is.

As part of their service project, Godsey and the rest of her seventh grade classmates have done research and educated themselves about eating and living a more healthy life. It’s not just about learning what it takes for you either, the 13 year old said, but passing that information on to others.

“As you get older it gets harder and harder to do those things that you need to stay healthy,” she said. “It’s very important. You only get one body and you need to keep that one body healthy.”

As part of the healthy snacking initiative, Godsey and her classmates helped turn healthy eats into both interesting and tasty eats. Rice crackers dressed up with an assortment of fresh fruit, and the celery, peanut butter, raisin combination known as ants on a log were some of the snacks the seventh graders presented to younger students in the school.

Kyle Kelleher, a 12-year-old seventh grader, said he hopes his efforts help his fellow students make better decisions when they eat.

“They look at (the snacks) and they see that it’s food, they know that it’s healthy food, but we’ve tried to do more creative things with it,” he said.

The salad bar grant was for $3,500, enough to get the ball rolling but certainly not enough to sustain the salad bar throughout. To do that, the students will need to buy in to the new nutrition, literally, and spend their lunch money on the healthier option they’re not presented with.

Red Bank Charter School’s nutrition program was conceptualized four years ago and as much as it incorporates healthy eating, so too does it explore where healthy foods come from and what makes them better for you.

Pennotti said there’s also a need to develop partnerships, partnerships between local businesses like Whole Foods and regional growers, as well as with parents, who not only volunteer their time and money, but can also help the healthy momentum going at home.

Susan Henderson, marketing team leader with Whole Foods, said there’s no better place than to encourage healthy living than at a school.

“They’re making those connections. Showing kids what they need to eat and where these foods come from,” she said. “If children learn (healthy eating) at an early age, it will stay with them.”