Farm to School Success Story: Livingston Unified School District
This month, the Regional Food and Nutrition Network listened in to their own Rebecca Jameson, the Director of Child Nutrition at Livingston Unified School District and RFNN Chair! Rebecca has been an integral part of the RFNN and has given many many hours of her time to its success. She also constantly strives to make sure her students in Livingston are provided the best nutrition they can possibly get. Enjoy her interview!
- What has been your biggest challenge in food service due to the COVID pandemic?
I would say the overall logistics of operating during the pandemic and the now transition to serving to students in the classroom along with operating our drive thru meal service simultaneously.
- How have you adapted and overcome these challenges?
Luckily, we purchased our classroom meal service equipment (insulated bags, transport carts, ice packs & heating packs) in the summer of 2020, when we didn’t know how we were starting the school year. While we didn’t start the school year off with students on campus, we were able to utilize the insulated bags for our bus meal deliveries and then had the equipment needed to transition to classroom meal service once students started coming back in January.
- How have you continued to include local produce into your school meals?
We were fortunate enough to approved for the USDA Unprocessed Fresh Fruits & Vegetables Pilot Program at the beginning of 2020. With this program we were able to allocate $40,000 of our entitlement dollars towards purchasing local produce through approved vendors. This helped our budget out tremendously because of our transition to purchasing mostly IW fruits & vegetables.
- What are you most proud of?
I’m proud of my staff and their resilience. They have taken this whole pandemic in stride and continue to persevere all of the changes that come their way. They truly are school lunch heroes and it’s been an honor riding out this pandemic with them on the front line.
- What advice do have for other Food Service Directors?
Listen to your staff. They have become experts in what works and what doesn’t throughout this pandemic. When assembling bulk meals and 500+ grab & go meals daily, time becomes their biggest challenge, so having a well balanced menu of IW & fresh items makes all the difference.
