State grants aim to transform school lunches
The Oregon Department of Education said Tuesday it has awarded 22 competitive grants for food-based, agriculture-based and garden-based education activities totaling $982,000.
The Farm to School and School Garden grants will provide more than 116,000 hours of farm to school educational programming. The funding was available to school districts, Educational Service Districts, nonprofit entities, commodity commissions or councils, watershed councils, and Tribal organizations across the state.
The grant program is the product of House Bill 2038–the Farm to School and School Garden Bill–passed by the Oregon Legislature with unanimous support in 2017.
Another portion of the grant is a non-competitive award of $3.5 million available to all Oregon school districts to assist in paying for costs incurred by the school district to purchase Oregon grown or processed food. The competitive educational grant is designed to work in harmony with the non-competitive portion to have a greater impact on healthy choices and habits for Oregon students.
This is a continuation of previous grants passed by the Oregon Legislature. The most recent version of this grant awarded $4.5 million to 141 schools and 15 organizations, resulting in a very successful program in which many sustainable best practices were showcased and replicated across the state.
The grants include:
OSU Extension, Central Oregon, Madras Awarded: $31,922 (500 students)
The student programs that will be implemented and continued with the ODE Farm to School Education Grant in the 509J School District will occur at Madras Elementary-STEAM into Ag Program; Buff Elementary Garden Club and Metolius Elementary-Meat Magic and Great Grains Curriculum. They will also create a central Oregon Ag education resource library for local educators.
