Pittsburgh Public Schools is well on its way to meeting its goals for procuring more sustainable and nutritious food for students.
District leaders on Wednesday shared with local stakeholders the results of a baseline assessment of the district’s food purchasing practices during the 2022-2023 school year. The report, compiled by the Center for Good Food Purchasing, found that more than 15% of the district’s $5.6 million food budget that year was spent on items from local and family-owned suppliers.
“It's something since 2017, we've been talking to our produce vendors and saying, ‘We want local,’” said chef Malik Hamilton, the district’s director of food services.
“If it's local and in season — the seasons here are so short — just bring it to us and then we'll worry about other stuff later,” he added.
PPS has been working with a coalition of community partners for nearly a decade to ensure its meal programs support student wellbeing, the environment and the local economy.
In 2021, school board members adopted a ‘good food purchasing’ policy that defines good food as “healthy, green, fair and affordable.” The policy requires the district to — when financially feasible — meet or exceed federal nutrition standards, buy ingredients from local and regional producers, and ensure all workers involved are treated and compensated fairly.
That criteria was to be incorporated into the district’s bidding process for food service contracts. PPS partners with vendors from across the state and region, and serves close to four million meals to students each school year.
According to the assessment, the district surpassed its initial goals for the amount of food purchased from worker-friendly suppliers, and met more than half of the center’s benchmarks for school nutrition.
The district is now working to reduce its spending on red and processed meat, increase the portion it spends on fruits and vegetables, and continue to provide students with healthy options that meet federal standards.
“We work really hard to hit those regulations every single week, every single day, and hand these students the most nutritious meal that we can,” Hamilton said. “And so to see that we are stacking up with larger districts that have longer growing seasons than we do, it makes me really proud that we're doing that.”
Federal cuts complicate district options
The district has also worked with partners like Grow Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council and Adagio Health to secure grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School program.
Hamilton said the district has earned a total of $200,000 from the grant program since 2018 to provide students with fresh salad bars, school gardens and nutrition education.
But recent federal cuts could limit the district’s access to future funding. Last month, USDA announced it would cancel $10 million in Farm to School grants awarded to states and school districts.
“If that program doesn't get reinstated, if it doesn't happen, that's $100,000 every few years that we're not going to have access to,” Hamilton said. “And that's a huge deal.”
Grants are one of the main ways the PPS food services department secures additional revenue. PPS currently guarantees free meals to all students, regardless of their financial standing, through its participation in the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the National School Lunch Program.
But school nutrition directors nationwide are also bracing for potential rollbacks to that program as well. Republican lawmakers have proposed spending cuts that would raise the poverty level needed for schools to provide universal free meals without an application.
Schools currently qualify for the program if at least 25% of their students receive supplemental assistance. While every PPS building meets the current federal requirement, Hamilton said Colfax K-8, Allderdice High School and CAPA 6-12 would lose their eligibility if the rules change.
“And that will add a lot of work,” he said.
Students who move between schools in different eligibility categories would have to fill out an application to retain their access to free meals. The district would also have to track families with unpaid school lunch debts — something Hamilton said leaders have not had to do since PPS first entered the CEP program in 2014.
“It's just going to be really difficult, and we'd much rather just be able to feed all those kids,” he said.
The Food Research & Action Center estimates close to 700 Pennsylvania schools — and 320,000 students — would be affected by the proposed change to CEP eligibility.
Hamilton said the district is also feeling the same price hikes consumers face at the grocery store: food costs have increased 24% since the onset of the pandemic. The average cost per meal has also increased by roughly 20 cents.
In the meantime, the district is applying for other grants to purchase new equipment that would allow food services staff to store summer produce for use further in the school year.
Hamilton said the district has also applied for funding to begin vertical farming. The method allows crops to be grown indoors and uses less water than typical producers.
“It won’t happen this year, it won’t happen next year, but eventually that’s where we’re trying to go,” Hamilton said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
