PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — As schools around the state and country try to serve kids healthier, fresh-made food, many are also in need of better kitchens, said Melanie Lagasse, the food service director at the New Sweden Consolidated School.
Lagasse has worked in food service at the elementary school since 2010, and she’s now lending her support to a bill co-sponsored by U.S. Senator Susan Collins that would help school districts modernize their kitchens.
Lagasse partly helped spur the idea for Collins’ bill, as she travelled to Washington, D.C., to share her thoughts about improving school food as part of an effort with the Pew Charitable Trust.
“If you update equipment, you can make better meals, more efficiently,” Lagasse said.
Collins and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) have reintroduced the School Food Modernization Act, a bill that would create a program offering funding, loans and support for school kitchens.
The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act required schools to serve more fresh produce, lean protein and whole grains, but many school have older kitchens that don’t support today’s emphasis on feeding kids fresh produce.
“Our legislation would help schools purchase equipment and provide training to allow food service personnel to offer a wide variety of nutritious meals and snacks for students,” Collins said in a media release.
Collins added nearly half of Maine students qualify for free and reduced-price school meals based on their household income.
The billwould create a loan guarantee assistance program within United States Department of Agriculture that would help schools purchase new kitchen equipment. It would also offer “targeted” grant assistance with seed funding for kitchen upgrades and create a training program for food service personnel.
The New Sweden Consolidated School is now closed, following a vote by the town. But the school was built in 1994 and had “really modern” kitchen, with menus that were ahead of many schools in serving wholesome meals like baked fish and sweet potatoes, Lagasse said.
That’s not the case in other, older schools, which might only have a two-burner stove, for instance, she said.
With the assistance from a school kitchen modernization program, schools could purchase steamers, convection ovens and warmers — equipment that makes it easier to prepare food from scratch, Lagasse said. With the steamers, she said, school kitchens can served steamed frozen vegetables, which are both more nutritious and tasty than canned produce.
