District nutrition director outlines grants, local-food purchases and kitchen upgrades

Pilar Gray, the district’s director of nutrition services, told the board the district has used multiple one-time grants to upgrade kitchens, train staff, and expand local-food purchasing for school meals. Gray said the district received $424,777 for kitchen infrastructure and training across 2021–2023 and that about $126,816 of that was targeted to freshly prepared meals; the funds paid for new walk-in freezers, mixers, a lift gate for the delivery van, a generator for the warehouse and partial remodel work at the Redwood kitchen.

Gray also described a roughly $96,400 school-food best-practices allocation that funded new ovens and remote temperature monitoring that protects food safety. She said a local-food-for-schools allocation (about $16,400) was used to buy produce from Nye Ranch and the Mendo Lake Food Hub, and that a California Department of Food and Agriculture Farm to School grant for $200,000 will support increased local procurement and nutrition education. "About district wide, 0.5 of our kids eat lunch with us every day, and about 56% eat breakfast every day," Gray said, noting particular gains from breakfast-in-classroom models at Redwood that raised daily breakfast participation to 86 students at that site.