Petaluma food services outlines farm-to-school push, salad-bar expansion and certification goal after serving nearly 1 million meals

The Petaluma City Schools Board of Education received a detailed update on the district's school meal program from Brian Dufour, the district's food service director, who said the department served "a little over 988,000 meals" over the last school year and is continuing California's universal school meal program.

Dufour told trustees the program's work spans operations, procurement and student engagement, and that the district is pursuing multiple changes to increase fresh, local food and reduce environmental impacts. "We're at a little over 988,000 meals served, over the course [of the] last school year," Dufour said.

The presentation outlined four near-term priorities: expanding student agency in menu and service decisions, increasing self-serve salad bars at secondary sites (salad bars are already running four days a week at elementary schools), formalizing procurement and compliance, and completing an administrative review year. Dufour said salad bars have been piloted and are in elementary sites; secondaries are planned but not yet installed.

Dufour summarized procurement work and a new farm-to-school request for proposals (RFP). "We released a farm to school RFP," he said, and staff built…