SCVi Snack Shack and Healthy School Lunch Program
When founder Amber Raskin and I were daydreaming about the new school, Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School, we thought it would be nice to have a snack bar that provided healthy snacks – ones without high-fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors or sweeteners – snacks that kids liked but that were good for them.
I shopped Trader Joes, Costco, Sams Club, Vons, Ralphs, Whole Foods and Bristol Farms to find snacks that fit this criteria. We first opened this “healthy” snack shack in September of 2008. Opening was just the beginning. Soon after, the 7th graders took the project over.
You see, SCVi is a project-based charter school. According to Wikipedia, Project-based learning, or PBL (often “PjBL” to avoid confusion with “Problem-based Learning”), is the use of classroom projects, intended to bring about deep learning, where students use technology and inquiry to engage with issues and questions that are relevant to their lives.
These classroom projects are used to assess student’s subject matter competence compared to traditional testing. The 7th grade students submitted resumes to apply for key positions within the store such as manager, assistant manager, public relations, inventory, CEO and more. Once the management had been chosen, the students ran every aspect of their business and made enough of a small profit to help run their “Renaissance Faire,” the culmination of their history studies on the Renaissance Era for the rest of the students.
With lots of help from parents, the snack shack is up and running for the 2009-2010 school year.
Shortly, the store will be transitioned and eventually managed by the new 7th grade class. Those students will work to find healthy products to offer, and accounting and management of the snack shack. This project meets many of the objectives of SCVi by encouraging all students or “customers” to make better, healthier food choices than they might make otherwise. Students learn accounting, merchandising, personnel recruitment, training, and retention, advertising and many other key business skills.
The healthy snack shack idea was submitted to Kiwi Magazine’s Moms of the Revolution contest to find moms who have made a difference in the health of children. We won “Runner-up,” which featured a picture and small article about the snack shack in the September/October issue and $500 worthof healthy, organic snacks.
Read the article and see all the winners of the contest. As on their website describing the magazine, Kiwi Magazine “is dedicated to helping parents raise their children the healthiest way possible. (Their) charge is to introduce families to the latest in natural and organic living—showing how to practice this lifestyle on an everyday basis”.
I had a dream last year of providing school lunches which were not only tasty and appealing to the students and affordable to parents, but organic as well. After much investigation, I discovered that their were a few vendors in the Los Angeles area offering organic menus to charter schools.
SCVi chose Royal Dining and Catering.
They have been able to offer us a mostly organic menu completely appealing to our students and at $3 to $3.50 per person. Our school community loves the food so much that parents order lunch for themselves and come eat with their kids. The teachers order lunch as well. They use all organic meats and vegetables. If they need to use something not organic, they make sure that the products are as natural as possible, free from high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners. Nothing is fried or breaded.
Lunches include California Rolls, Pizza Bagels, Cheese Ravioli, Taco Salad, Garden Burgers, Teriyaki Bowls Baked, Potato Bar, Fettuccini Alfredo, Vegetable Lasagna, Turkey Dinner, Quesadillas, Tofu Bowl, Homemade Macaroni and Cheese, Beef Soft Tacos and Chinese Chicken Salad.
Who wouldn’t want to come over and eat for $3.50?
Another amazing program that we started at SCVi was around our local Farmers Market. A volunteer would show up at the end of our Sunday’s Farmer’s Market to pick up the fresh fruit and vegetables that the farmer’s were unable to sell. The produce was taken to school and washed. Fresh fruit was put out on a platter in the Student Center for the students to munch on during the day. I would come in on Monday’s and cook with the kids using whatever vegetables we would get.
For months, I made healthy soups from the produce. Kids who admitted to never eating their vegetables suddenly were eating soup made solely of vegetables! I couldn’t walk down the halls without students asking what our next soup would be. The Kindergartners use plastic knives to cut up the produce. We made eggplant dip and tabbouleh, lettuce wraps and salad. The produce was all free but the kids became accustomed to eating fresh fruit and vegetables in new and exciting ways.
I must thank my Health and Wellness Committee for all their helping making healthy eating a priority at our school.
