STURGEON BAY (NBC 26) — In Sturgeon Bay, students are tackling food insecurity in a fresh way.
Students grow produce in a greenhouse and same-day harvests head straight to school cafeterias across the district, helping more kids get access to fresh, healthy meals.
We got to see the students in action in the Waseda Farm greenhouse at the Sturgeon Bay school district, watch below:
Students like Lucy Tarkowski are part of a sustainable living class that makes it happen.
"We've grown a lot, there's peppers, peas, basil, kale," Lucy Tarkowski, a junior at Sturgeon Bay Highschool said.
That food ends up in the school cafeteria either the same day or the following one.
"I'll be like going through the lunch line and I'll be like, 'Oh, I grew that!'" Tarkowski said, "And it's just... I think it's kinda cool."
Jenny Spude runs the Sturgeon Bay School District’s food program and says this hands-on class is just one way they’re working to fight food insecurity.
"Within the last hour, we harvested that," Spude said.
She says that between the four public schools in the Sturgeon Bay School District and Saint John Bosco Catholic School, which have a total of about 1,122 students enrolled, about half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
"Within our school district, we do see a regular occurrence of children not being food secure," Spude said.
"We grow a lot for our kitchen and, like... it's pretty cool to just go to lunch and see things that you grew," Sturgeon Bay sophmore Allonie Hall said.
Hall says being able to help provide fresh food makes a real difference for classmates who might not have it at home.
"Some people... they don't really have all this at their house so to come to school and be able to eat that is pretty awesome," Hall said.
The district’s food program is federally funded which allows Spude to buy the produce from the school and serve it to students the same day.
But she says more challenges could be coming.
With the government shutdown, the reimbursements the district usually gets from the federal government will be delayed and that could make it harder to keep buying what students need.
