June 1 – Joseph Ortega has big plans for the Aspen Community School garden.
Ortega, an art teacher, is one of the main caretakers of the garden, which clings to a hill at the back of the Aspen campus. He organizes the garden club and will spend part of his summer holidays looking after a huge range of plants.
On the penultimate day of the 2023-2024 school year, Ortega and the garden club had planted kale, spinach, eggplant, peppers and a variety of herbs in a small greenhouse. Artichokes, squash, corn and tomatoes sprouted in the garden’s six outdoor beds. In one corner, a small compost pile of straw and food scraps was developed to help enrich the soil.
The space is a great tool for tasting unfamiliar foods or teaching academic concepts, such as photosynthesis and nutritional cycling, Ortega said.
“My experience is that they are very open to trying new foods and are really interested,” he said of Aspen’s students. “Even kids you wouldn’t expect to be interested seem to love it.”
The New Mexico Public Education Department has proposed new rules for school meals that mirror efforts at Aspen, which serves children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The proposal calls for on-site food preparation, local sourcing of ingredients, school gardens, composting and plate waste studies and other changes to improve the freshness of school meals.
The rules for healthy universal school meals have not yet been finalized. The department gathered public feedback during a hearing on Wednesday, collecting nearly 200 pages of submitted comments. As written, the proposal would go into effect in July 2025, in time for the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
School officials in New Mexico agree that free, nutritious meals are a good thing. In a letter to the Department of Public Instruction, Sandra Kemp, executive director of Albuquerque Public Schools’ Food and Nutrition Services, compared school meals to transportation and textbooks — another essential part of learning that should be free for students.
However, many officials believe the department’s proposal goes too far and would impose new, costly requirements without giving districts and charter schools sufficient time or resources to comply.
“It keeps me awake at night. I don’t see a way that we can implement the things that are needed in this rule,” Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Guy said during Wednesday’s hearing.
But Michael Chavez, director of the Public Education Department’s Student Success and Wellness Bureau, which oversees nutrition, urged school officials not to worry. The agency will have a dedicated team of staff to provide support.
“It’s going to be different for every school. … This is not a one-size-fits-all for school districts,” Chavez said in an interview.
‘Make better food, better meals’
Although most people don’t realize it, determining what type of food gets shoveled onto a child’s lunch tray is a complicated calculation — one that sits at the intersection of state and federal regulations.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees nationwide school breakfast and lunch programs, including setting nutritional requirements for the food served in school cafeterias across the country. Those standards set a high bar for nutritional value – up to and including disqualifying a brand of tortillas because they are one gram short of whole grains.
In the coming years, the USDA’s nutritional requirements will become stricter, with planned reductions in added sugars and sodium to encourage healthier eating.
However, the Public Education Department’s proposal for healthy universal school meals comes amid changes in New Mexico law.
In 2023, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 4, an ambitious plan to provide free meals to all public school students, with the state reimbursing districts for costs not covered by the USDA. When the governor signed the bill at Santa Fe’s own Piñon Elementary School, New Mexico joined a small cadre of states that provided all school meals at no cost to families.
It was a great idea in a state like New Mexico, Chavez said, where nearly 1 in 5 children experience food insecurity, according to data from the New Mexico Voices for Children’s 2023 Kids Count Data Book.
The bill wasn’t just about providing meals; it also aimed to improve the quality of meals, with high priority given to freshly cooked and locally grown food.
“The main goal … was to make better food and better meals,” Chavez said. “We want to include…New Mexico farmers, New Mexico foods like beef and the use of our state’s fruits and vegetables.”
The latest round of regulations is all about clarifying – and receiving feedback on – how that legislation should be implemented.
Santa Fe schools have an advantage
The department’s proposal would raise the bar for school meals in New Mexico.
At a minimum, the rules would require that at least 50% of meals be “freshly prepared” in a kitchen on school grounds, with at least three items per week sourced from New Mexico farms, ranches or food operations, in addition to new requirements for in-seat time during lunch breaks, student and family feedback, and collecting and donating unused food.
The proposal also calls for establishing school gardens on at least 50% of campuses, developing on-site composting programs and increasing nutrition education for students and staff, involving middle and high school students in food preparation and studying food consumption. It would give schools and districts some choice in implementing changes.
The department will provide financial incentives for compliance – required for public schools and optional for schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education and tribes, as well as private schools.
Schools that follow the rules will receive up to $4 more for each lunch service and up to $2 more for each breakfast than schools that do not follow the rules.
Santa Fe Public Schools has a head start in meeting the proposed requirements, said Anna Farrier, executive director of the nonprofit Cooking with Kids.
Farrier’s organization offers hands-on food and nutrition education programs at 14 of the district’s 28 locations, as well as in schools throughout Rio Arriba County. Schools provide classroom space and time for nutrition education, Farrier said, while Cooking with Kids staff members lend their expertise to introduce students to new foods and healthy eating.
During the most recent school year, Cooking with Kids increased its work in school gardens and helped establish a new one at Kearny Elementary School. It is not uncommon to see garden beds or greenhouses on local campuses.
Based on Cooking with Kids’ experiences in the district, Farrier said, “Santa Fe is already doing very well. … Santa Fe Public Schools embraces scratch cooking and local food sourcing and has been driving that conversation statewide for years. . “
The local district is “fortunate” to have the resources and experiences to meet many of the requirements, Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez wrote in a message to The New Mexican.
But he added, “Many of the requirements may not be realistic or achievable for many districts.”
‘Preparing neighborhoods for failure’
During Wednesday’s hearing, school officials were consistent in their criticism: It’s too much, too fast.
Los Alamos Public Schools was among the most vocal opponents.
The district is in its first year of providing free breakfast and lunch to all students, Assistant Superintendent Mike Johnson said, and relies primarily on state funding to provide these meals.
Although well-intentioned government mandates to plant school gardens or build compost piles on campus, plus the additional administrative tasks of studying cafeteria waste, providing additional professional development to teachers, and soliciting feedback from students and families, they will taking away the educational mission. Johnson and Guy argued.
“As currently written, these rules set districts up for failure. … This is a huge, unfunded mandate. There is no question of any additional funding to support these initiatives,” said Ellen Specter, deputy president of the Los Alamos school. plate.
“If districts are forced to cover these costs from operating funds, the only way to balance the budget will be to lay off staff, and this will undoubtedly mean larger class sizes and poor educational outcomes,” she added.
Others pointed out that the 2025 deadline for the proposal is unattainable.
Laurie Allocca, nutrition services manager at the New Mexico School for the Deaf, encouraged the Public Education Department to extend the timeline for implementation by years, using the USDA’s yearlong plan to meet nutritional needs as an example. Why don’t we start with a pilot program and a feasibility study first, Allocca suggested.
“I believe you have good intentions; we all want to feed kids healthy food. But… even the USDA gives years and steps for these things to happen,” she said.
Preparing more meals on-site will also be a challenge, said Kim Meeks, director of student nutrition for the Roswell Independent School District. Meeks estimated that her district provides prepackaged, USDA-approved breakfasts for about 8,000 students each morning through the Breakfast After the Bell program, in which students eat their first meal of the day during class.
Even preparing 50% of breakfast meals fresh “wouldn’t be possible,” she said.
“This [proposal] should be what lawmakers voted for: free breakfast and lunch meals for all students and healthier meals,” she said.
