Charleston County School District, SC CCSD 101, 17 Oct 2019

Previous Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: CCSD 101 Nutrition Services

Description

Charleston County School District's Office of Nutrition Services strives to ensure every child leaves our cafeteria happier than when they came in. This edition of CCSD 101 looks at the effort it takes to provide 47,000 meals a day to our students as well as the consideration the department takes in creating meals that are both appetizing and healthy.

A

Charleston County school districts, office of Nutrition Services manages the federal programs for breakfast and lunch in our schools and the seamless summer feeding program. They also coordinate the mid morning snack program, the fresh fruit and vegetable program, meals for Head, Start and Early, Head Start and the supper program. The supper summer and fresh fruit and vegetable programs are actually the largest of any school district in the state. Nutrition Services is a self-sufficient department responsible for all operational costs. They invest nearly five hundred thousand dollars each year and equipment.

A

They also use federal reimbursements and student meal payments to cover all operational costs, ranging from food and paper supplies to indirect costs and equipment purchases. More than 47,000 meals are served daily across the district during the school year and another 300 thousand meals were served during the summer months. Nutrition Services is made up of nearly 450 team members. Every employee from the school cafeteria level to the district office receives annual training and new hires receive on-the-job training along with servsafe certification and a commitment to promote professional excellence.

A

We spoke with an officer from Nutrition Services Joe Pettit, to learn more about the overall operation Joe thanks for stopping by for this interview here at James Simmons elementary, the cafeteria is one of the many sights in this school district that serves they combined 47,000 meals a day in Charleston County Schools. How does your team pull that off.

B

When you think about the number it just almost astounds me when I hear that 47,000 Mills it starts with each one of our schools operators and how they're prepping and serving our managers assuring that the products in place and then all the way back to our administrators and central office team. Who does a lot of long-term planning to assure that we can pull off 47,000 Mills and that's not including other type of program services like snacks and fresh fruit and veggie programs. It's an amazing number. You.

A

Mentioned long term planning and part of that is, is the menu. How does your team develop the menu from an operational standpoint? Well,.

B

When the district and introduce the students are the heart of our work, the way we interpret that is, we take a look at culinary industry trends. If there's ways that we can start to implement things, we test it with students, they give us feedback. We then look at how we can incorporate it into our menu meeting, all the regs and then, in addition to that, if it's a student favorite we're not moving in, we want to make sure that they have what they want and we're also introducing them to new items. You've.

A

Mentioned the size and scope of your department, but what's something else that you want people out there to know about nutrition services in Charleston, County, school districts.

B

I believe it's the passion that we have of making sure that the students know how much we love what we do and we always put them at the center of our. Why and in addition to that, all the background work that goes on if there's a school closing or we're coming out of a long winter break Spring Break we're receiving product coming in when there's no students, teachers in the schools and then we're assuring that when the bell rings we're ready to serve food and.

A

A couple questions go and answer: eggs ago you mentioned trends. How has nutrition services in school districts changed over the last five years over the last ten years? Well,.

B

We are always looking how we can come up with new recipe ideation, but also what we're taking a more focus on as our people, our team and how we're giving them opportunities to be able to grow in advance. So we've created assistant manager positions, a training program which allows now for training managers to apply for positions of that.

B

In addition to that, we've hired a registered dietician and we're also focusing on our marketing to our students, to our parents, to our communities and then, in addition to that, a department newsletter so that we're keeping everybody in the loop on what's going on in our department. Joe.

A

Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. School meals in CCSD are comprised of the five food groups, grains, proteins, dairy vegetables and fruits. All of these components must also meet strict daily and weekly standards for saturated fat, sodium and calories based upon the students grade levels to learn more about the work that goes into the nutritional quality for our school meals. We spoke with the district's registered dietician Kari Hollifield Carrie, thanks for joining us here at Julie, Mitchell elementary school.

A

The outdoor gardens down to a classroom really need to know that items that are grown in these gardens end up in the cafeterias here at Mitchell elementary school, so wanted to go back to what we mentioned earlier in this about the five important components of food and meals, and also maybe give you a chance to talk about the restrictions that you have to keep in mind when it comes to what's served in our school meals. Absolutely.

C

So we know through research that those five components include essential nutrients for our students, growth and well-being. We also know that by limiting the sodium is saturated fats within meals that we are helping them live healthy long lives as well. I know.

A

That there has to be a lot of planning, that's involved with the school meals as it relates to nutrition, talk with Joe about the operational planning. But can you go into detail when it comes to planning meals and their nutritional value? Yes,.

C

So it all comes down to ingredients for us clean labels, and what this means is that our beef is a hundred percent beef. We have whole mussel chicken, we're using the freshest, purest ingredients in our foods and then we're taking all these ingredients and putting them together to make those scratch-made meals and.

A

I know that another important component or things that you have to be aware of come to food allergies. So can you discuss that? That's something I know that you're aware of yes.

C

Food allergies are on the rise across the United States. With this being said, I the dietician will meet one-on-one with the parents and with the students to come up with specific special diets to meet those student allergies needs. We also do provide gluten free grain alternatives, along with lactaid milk and soy milk options. As long as we do have that proper medical documentation and then.

A

Another important initiative to speak about for your date for your nutrition services team is the work that goes into the collaboration with local farms and state farms and making sure that what they grow comes here to our cafeterias as well. Right, yes,.

C

So we believe that farm-to-table really allows the kids to win communities to win and the farmers to win as well. We have started the harvest of the month, we're across in all of our cafeterias across the district we do provide of South Carolina grown fruit or vegetable recipe, and we also partner with local organizations that manage and maintain these beautiful school gardens that you see behind us, along with bringing that outside classroom. Terry.

A

Thank you for all that you do, and we really are thankful for the nutritional work that your team.

C

Thanks so much thank.

A

You to better serve families. Nutrition Services has also created a digital menu which is available through the district website. This menu allows parents, staff, school nurses and students to view each menu item, along with the nutrition and allergen information. If you have questions about nutrition services in CCSD make sure to contact their office or if it's school, specific contact. Information for each cafeteria is available on the district website. Thanks for watching CCSD 101.