Rethinking School Lunch: Facilities Design
Today, the nation’s school lunch program is at a crossroads, faced with nutritional and service problems so serious they make news headlines. So many issues are involved — nutrition, facilities, food service, student disinterest — that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Local experiences indicate that with an integrated educational approach, school lunch can be the doorway to a whole new way of providing education for sustainability with broad-reaching effects for our children and community.
Connecting student learning outcomes to school gardens, school meals, local agriculture, and larger health issues integrates classroom learning with practical experience and helps students form healthy eating habits.
It follows that the school’s commitment to improving student health should be modeled in the school dining experience. Quality of school meals is one expression of that commitment; environment and social atmosphere of the student dining hall are another.
But changing the way we serve food in schools goes much deeper than simply removing Coke machines from the hall and packaged, processed food from trays. Many schools are faced with antiquated or inadequate cafeterias, kitchens, dining areas, and storage facilities — a major obstacle to redesigning food programs.
The idea of redesigning facilities is challenging and exciting. Schools facing budget constraints may find themselves looking for creative ways to assess their needs and obtain financing, but the many good reasons to move forward in this area will provide good fuel for your new cooking fires.
Lunchrooms Can Be Learning Centers
School dining environments can be revitalized in two important ways.
First, they can accomplish their primary purpose: to provide nourishing, wholesome meals for students. Second, they can serve education by functioning as learning centers.
As Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant and founder of The Edible Schoolyard, points out, “The opportunity to see what is occurring in the kitchen can be a valuable part of the learning experience.”
Lessening visual and social barriers between the kitchen and the dining room encourages students to enjoy their lunchroom experience and learn from it. An open kitchen design allows students to observe food preparation. These daily observations can lead to the acquisition of practical skills and knowledge that support and influence lifelong eating habits.
Consider designing a new facility with an open serving line from which everyone eats. The food should be easily available and beautifully presented. Design kitchens around the menus you want to serve.
Every Planning Challenge is Unique
School food policies often specify particular conditions — such as time allotted for eating, socializing, and quiet time — that have implications for facilities design. Before undertaking a facilities redesign, be sure to give careful attention to the full intent of school food policies.
How Much Space Do You Need?
Switching from frozen and preprocessed meal service to meals prepared daily from fresh ingredients will probably require more space than you currently have. Here are some factors to consider.
Cooking with fresh ingredients doubles the space needed for food preparation — to about 1 square foot of kitchen space for every meal served. This assumes a base kitchen size of at least 1,000 square feet to serve between 200 to 1,000 students. Thereafter, the kitchen can be increased in size by the formula of 1 square foot per meal served.
If more than 200 lunches are served one at a time by hand in a single period, add 100 square feet for an additional serving line. (By contrast, a speed line with prepackaged food will serve up to 400 K-8 students in 20 minutes or less.)
Allow 50 percent of kitchen space for food preparation, and 50 percent for storage.
Allow 50 percent of the total space allocated to storage for dry storage, and 50 percent for refrigerated or frozen storage.
When cooking from scratch, 90 percent of cold storage is refrigeration and 10 percent is freezer.
What About Costs?
Do research — make sure to get the information about costs before beginning to plan in earnest. Here are some hidden and not-so-hidden costs to keep in mind.
Construction costs average about $300 per square foot to remodel an existing building on school grounds. If new building construction is a metal warehouse-style shell, a typical school site shell building might cost between $100 and $125 per square foot. The average cost to build an onsite district kitchen from scratch is $425 per square foot.
“Soft costs” building permits and sewer hookups increase construction costs by about 20 percent to 40 percent. Soft costs include 10 percent for design contingencies and 10 percent for construction contingencies.
Budgeting for improvements to kitchen facilities should also include improvements to the environment and atmosphere of the dining hall.
Cooking fresh requires on average nearly five times as much incoming delivery truck traffic as for processed food.
Ultimately, school lunch feeds minds, bodies, and communities. It is a vital issue in our society that goes far beyond the meal on the plate.
The Center for Ecoliteracy is dedicated to education for sustainable living by fostering a profound understanding of the natural world, grounded in direct experience, www.ecoliteracy.org.
Sidebar
Instructional School Gardening Grows Healthy Crops, Minds, and Bodies
Today’s educators are under a lot of pressure to teach standards-based material that will increase student test scores. Yet, teachers also want to engage student interest and fulfill their mission to educate future citizens of the world by addressing and offering solutions to the issues that 21st century students face.
Pat McKean, the science area coordinator for Convent of the Sacred Heart, Pre S-6 was looking for tools to help her achieve these two goals when she learned about the Earthbox Education System, www.earthbox.com, at a National Science Teacher’s Association Conference in St. Louis. With Earthbox, there is no weeding, hoeing or digging. Planting, nurturing, and harvesting are made easy based on the research of scientists at the University of Florida who determined the number of plants, the amount of fertilizer, and plant placement best suited for the system.
Numerous studies show that students who participate in garden-based programs score higher than their peers across all standardized tests and have higher grade point averages. Research also shows that children who plant their own fruits and vegetables are more likely to eat them and to increase overall consumption.
McKean returned to her school excited to begin, armed with six Ready to Grow Kits that provide everything that you need to grow crops, a Youth Garden Guide, and the standards-based Pre-K-12th grade curricula.
That spring, the kindergarten students planted large sunflower seeds in two boxes, and the first-grade students planted dwarf sunflower seeds in two additional boxes. The boxes were placed outside their classrooms in two different areas: a walkway in front of the school where traffic is constantly moving, and a patio area at the back of the school that becomes quiet at night and on weekends. The differing sites provided the students with an opportunity to observe the effect of traffic patterns on the crops. Finally, tomatoes and eggplants were planted in the remaining two boxes. These crops produce their fruit in the summer, so when school closed, McKean took them home. They yielded 35 pounds of tomatoes and 30 pounds of eggplant.
In the spring of 2008, McKean brought the boxes back to school to plant in their classrooms during Earth Week. The first-grade students planted sugar snap peas, and the kindergarten students planted sunflower seeds that, thanks to the casters, easily rolled indoors when forecasts predicted low temperatures. Also, the middle school students got bit by the “EarthBox Bug.” They planted swiss chard and lettuce in the boxes and in a raised bed to compare the rate of growth and yield in each.
Today, gardening at the Convent of the Sacred Heart has a new meaning: gardening grows, crops, minds and bodies with sustainable practices that address key issues of the 21st century. Students working with the container garden system learn how to grow and eat healthy crops, how to use less water, and reduce fertilizer runoff in a recyclable system that reuses the same potting medium year after year. Students are becoming agents of change to improve the quality of life for themselves, their planet and for future generations.
Product Roundup
ATD-American Breakroom & Cafeteria Furniture
Students and staff will always find a great place to meet or eat with ATD's wide selection. Rollaway tables with benches or stools and convertible folding benches provide complete cafeteria table solutions for multi-use spaces. These mobile tables store compactly and are available in a variety of sizes and colors. You can also select bistro or cafe tables with coordinating dining chairs or stools. For quick changes, select folding tables, folding chairs and stacking chairs from ATD's menu of portable dining furniture.
www.atdamerican.com/school-furniture
US Markerboard Cafeteria Tables and Seating
US Markerboard cafeteria tables and seating provide a stable and comfortable place for students. The innovative tables are easy to set up and easy to fold up and store to save you space, time, and money. In addition, the tables feature casters for maximum mobility anytime and anywhere. Choose from tables with bench seating or stool seating. Generous tabletop spacing minimizes pinched fingers and rounded tabletop corners help minimize injury. Thick tabletops, strong frames, and sturdy seating can support students for years to come.
www.USMarkerboard.com
Discover Mobile Tables by Midwest Folding
Discover Mobile Tables from Midwest Folding offer the benefits of ergonomically designed seating combined with the operational efficiencies of mobile tables equipped with attached seats. The rib-reinforced, injection molded, structural polypropylene chairs provide support to the lumbar region of the student’s back. Discover chairs provide just the right amount of flexibility to accommodate varying seating positions for maximum comfort when used for dining. Seats swivel for easy access to the table and allow all seats to face the same direction.
www.midwestfolding.com |
