Federal farm-to-school funding withers, devastates school lunch programs

Chicago Tribune

18-04-2025

Dawn Kelley, director of food services at Portage Township Schools, was at an event intended to celebrate the success of the National Farm to School Lunch Program when she found out the federal program's funding was canceled. It turned into a funeral dirge for the program instead.
In Northwest Indiana, the program has allowed the Northwest Indiana Food Council to provide 2 million pounds of fresh foods to 134 schools, she said.
The program transformed school lunches in the three years since it began.
Nick Alessandri, director of food services at River Forest Community School Corp., leafed through invoices to see how much the district has benefitted this year. 'It's right around $80,000,' he said. Listening to the farm-fresh products will make a person hungry: Ground beef, hamburger patties, pork shoulder, breakfast sausage, Canadian bacon, sausage links, eggs, lettuce, whole tomatoes, various produce, probably 16 varieties of apples.
'We do participate in the Local Food for Schools program at Yost Elementary School and it is very disappointing that this program is being cut. Yost is our only school that qualified to participate, but amidst rising food costs and inflation impacting every aspect of our operation, every little bit helps. It's frustrating to say the least,' Duneland School Corp. Director of Child Nutrition Tammy Watkins said.
At Portage, breakfasts have included real maple syrup and local honey for granola bars, Kelley said.
The students love the difference the food has made. 'It's a huge effect on them. They notice the difference in the quality,' Alessandri said.
'We get fresh broccoli, they're cleaning me out,' easily consuming 70 to 80 pounds of it during lunch, Alessandri said.
They can taste the difference between fresh fruit and canned or frozen, he noted. 'My meal counts go up every year.'
From August to October, then April and May, River Forest students have enjoyed the salad bar with fresh produce from the program.
Alessandri was hired the year the federal program began. With fresh food, there's less waste. Frozen vegetables often get dumped in the trash because they have less flavor, he said.
'Every day we're doing some stuff from scratch here,' he said. 'I invested time with my staff, showing them some things.'
Portage's food service program has also involves a lot of scratch cooking. The district has won numerous awards for its food service program recently.
Students have been able to try a lot of different foods than they normally would have, Kelley said.
At Fegely Middle School, Principal Ann Marie Caballero introduced students to arroz con pollo, a Mexican chicken and rice dish that was one of her grandmother's specialties.
Arroz con pollo's January debut on the school lunch menu was part of a push for Portage students to experience various ethnic foods.
Melissa Deavers, director of communications and community engagement at Portage, said her young daughter is a picky eater but has tried new foods because of the fresh ingredients. 'Her palate has expanded so much,' Deavers said.
Portage Township School Board member Lori Wilkie said it's important to be aware of additives, food dyes and other ingredients in processed foods that can have adverse consequences for some students. 'When you have fresh foods, you don't have these kinds of things,' she said.
Scratch cooking with fresh ingredients takes skill. It's different with serving processed foods. 'I can hire a 10-year-old to kid to do this, and they'd probably do well,' Alessandri said.
At South Haven Elementary School, second graders in the gardening club harvested lettuce Thursday from a hydroponics setup in the school's sensory-friendly room. Connie Melton, club sponsor, watched the kids put on plastic gloves to handle the lettuce leaves.
'Pick from the back for me. Get those big leaves,' she said.
Occasionally, one of the leaves got a taste test. Either finish it or throw it away, Melton said. That leaf can't be put in with others harvested.
Every 28 days, the lettuce is ready to harvest. The leaves are either added to a salad bar for the kids or served to the staff for salads.
The gardening club is limited to second graders because older students tend to get involved in different clubs, Melton said. The gardening club for second graders began three years ago. 'Our courtyard needed some love,' she said, so a sensory garden now allows students to smell, touch and see – and sometimes taste – things in the garden.
'It gives them ownership in the building,' Melton said.
It also educates students on what growing their own food is like, Deavers said. 'This really gives them a look into different types of communities.'
Portage has several hydroponic gardens throughout the district, three of them purchased through a $20,000 grant, Kelley said. Each produces about 25 pounds of food every 28 days.
Not all the food served to students is fresh. 'We're not going to hand bread every chicken tender. We'd be here to midnight,' Alessandri said. But fresh food is better.
The ground beef sourced from nearby farms is still pink, not a dull brown.
'Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to buy fresh ground beef. It's not in the budget,' Kelley said.
For two years, Portage has provided free lunches and breakfasts to students. There's a cost to prepare the meals, however. The district gets reimbursed $2.84 per breakfast served and $4.45 per lunch. There's a complicated formula that goes into determining this that includes 48% of Portage students qualifying for free lunches based on household income.
'We had no notice' when the funding for the program was canceled, Kelley said. This is the last school year for the program. In Indiana, though, school budgets are for the calendar year.
'It's terrible. I don't really want to think about it. Right now, my plan is I don't know,' Alessandri said.
The day he opened an email saying the program had been canceled was the day after the deadline for applying for various commodities through a different program.
In 2011, first lady Michelle Obama got schools eating healthier. President Joe Biden stressed local sourcing of foods, which helps both children and local farmers. Biden created the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Farm to School Lunch Program.
'All of a sudden Trump gets in office, and it's like boom, we're not going to do it anymore,' Alessandri said.
It's not that the Trump administration doesn't like the same ideas. On April 9, USA Today published an op-ed jointly written by Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touting Trump's Make America Healthy Again campaign.
'First, we are advancing buy American policies that will get food grown by American farmers into the hands of children and families through our nutritious food programs,' they wrote.
Since then, Kennedy appeared with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun to promote the idea.
But the federal program, still listed on the USDA website, remains unfunded after the end of this school year.
'If that's the case, then what are we doing? They're basically contradicting what they're saying,' Alessandri said. 'We have it right here in our back yard, and we're closing it down.'
'I just don't see the logic behind this,' he said.
Kelley is urging people to write to their federal representatives in Congress, House and Senate alike, to urge that funding be restored for the National Farm to School Lunch Program.
'Our community really stands behind us,' Alessandri said.
'I just can't fathom why they're doing this,' he said of the USDA program ending. The $1 billion spent nationwide for the program is a drop in the bucket for the federal government but has made a huge difference in children's lives, Alessandri said.
'It starts from childhood, nutrition and getting kids to eat different foods,' he said. 'If that's what they're exposed to, that's what they're going to know.'
Even if the program were being canceled, phasing it out would have made more sense, Alessandri said. 'It would be nice if we got even partial funding,' he said.
Farmers aren't getting rich from the program. They've got to work hard to break even, he said. Farming is a difficult job. It also involves planning well before the season begins to figure out what crops to plant and who potential customers will be.
'It's really a crisis on our hands,' Alessandri said. 'I just don't see how they can take this away from kids. That's the worst thing about this.'