Healthy food, healthy minds

Carbon County School District No. 2 is being awarded the Innovative School Lunch Makeover Award, in recognition of their efforts to improve the nutritional quality of school lunches.

The district applied for the Healthy Meals Incentives (HMI) grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which provided $149,589 to go towards equipment, supplies, training, student engagement and farm-to-school activities.

The Innovative School Lunch Makeover “recognizes improvement in the nutritional quality of a school lunch meal while maintaining student acceptance.” Josalyn Miller, district head cook, said applying for the award was a condition of the grant.

“As a part of the grant you have to put in for an award within the next two years, if you think you qualify. I put in for one of the awards because I knew we had done a lot and our team across the district has really worked hard on creating these meals for the kids,” Miller said.

The grant and award are part of a larger effort to improve student nutrition in the district, in line with new USDA requirements. With increased nutritional value in food, there is an increase in student energy and grades Miller explained.

“Our main goal is to get scratch cooking back, to get away from all this prepackaged stuff and get to real meals for the kids. This year our main focus was lunch,” Miller said.

HMI awards will be given out on a rolling basis until June 30, 2025. Winners are announced on the USDA and HMI website.

The district was the first in the Mountain Plains Region to receive the award.

“We were the only ones in Wyoming to get a grant from them, so that was really exciting. To then be the first ones in the Mountain Plains Region to get an award from them, that was really exciting as well,” Miller said.

The improvements in school lunches are required by the USDA, but is also something the school feels passionately about.

“Luckily we have really good staff. I have really amazing assistance in Hanna and Encampment and here in Saratoga who come in extra early and are willing to put in the work. With a lot of schools, staffing is the biggest hurdle, we’re really blessed in our district not to have that,” Miller said.

She emphasized the effort the staff put in across the district, as well as the help from volunteers to ensure the success of the new program. Miller said the learning curve was the biggest difficulty the district faced.

“With COVID it was so much heat and serve. Everything was packaged. When you start doing that for a long time it’s kinda hard to get back into scratch cooking,” said Miller.

The cost of scratch cooking didn’t hamper the efforts to improve the lunch program. Miller said she spent a majority of the food budget on fresh fruits and vegetables, but it was a necessary expense. Food donations from the community also helped to reduce the burden on the district.

Miller isn’t done with working to improve school lunches.

“This is just our first step. Lunch was our main focus this year, next year we’re working on breakfast and starting to do some educational opportunities. We’re going to try to get rid of those added sugars in breakfast and there are some fun things we are going to try,” Miller said. “We’re going to get waffle irons, so the kids will have fresh made waffles. One of our schools is going to do an omelet station at the high school where kids will be able to make their own omelet.”

In the future, hydroponic gardens are planned to be built at a few schools throughout the district. The hope is to increase hands-on-learning and educational opportunities through food.