Author: Martha Yount
Planning Unit: Family and Consumer Sciences
Major Program: Accessing Nutritious Foods (general)
Outcome: Intermediate Outcome
The Nutrition Education Program and FCS Extension continue to build a collaboration with school nutrition in Kentucky’s education system. The school cafeteria offers an opportunity for Policy, Systems and Environment change that will immediately and directly impact many of the 479,000 Kentucky students that are eligible for free or reduced price school meals. (KDE, 2018) Many Kentucky schools are providing at least 2 meals a day to students, with others serving additional snacks or even supper. While the National School Lunch program already has regulations in place to ensure that schools are serving nutritious foods, getting students to select and consume the healthy foods is another matter. The Smarter Lunchroom Concept is a collection of low and no-cost strategies for school cafeterias to do just that. In the 2017 program year, SNAP-Ed worked with the Kentucky Department of Education School Nutrition Branch and Kentucky’s Educational Cooperatives to begin work toward a collaborative project to connect approved SNAP-Ed curriculum with school nutrition employees in qualifying areas. Presentations were made to 70 school nutrition directors at Ohio Valley, Central Kentucky, and Green River Regional Educational Cooperative meetings. As a result, Smarter Lunchroom Program trainings have been scheduled in Grant and Jefferson County school districts at the beginning of the school year in fall of 2018. Appropriate trainings meet both the SNAP-Ed Guidelines as well as count toward the training needs identified by USDA’s Professional Standards for All School Nutrition Employees, final rule 2015. The Nutrition Education Program is working with KDE School Nutrition Branch to develop a common portal to connect School Nutrition employee training needs with appropriate CES staff.
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