Nan, Lets see if I got it right: You, the nice horticulture teacher want to improve the quality and quantity of the school lunch served at your state run special education school with food that you raise in your school's garden. The people who run the cafeteria only let students sell chocolate bars in the cafeteria, but all else has to come out of their kitchen.
As a former PTA parent ( my kid graduated high school, free at last from the PTA!) and a hotel restaurant union shop steward with jobs to protect, I see that the way to get from point A to point B here will mean that you will have to make a detour through J and W in order to get where you want to go. I am not kidding - this is a political and bureaucratic situation. As departments, you have administration in your school, the teachers, medical ( the nurse), custodial staff and dietary. I don't know if your custodians and dietary employees have a union, but they sure as heck have bureaucratic rules that they have to follow to keep their jobs. It may be that the folks in the dietary do not answer to the administration in the school but to a central office that manages food service for the City of Baltimore, the State of Maryland, or whomever. Your dietary employees job ( I don't know if you have your own dietitian at your school or a district dietitian who handles several sites) is to properly receive, safely store, serve and dispose of foodstuffs certified to be safe and wholesome by the powers that be to the consumer base in the school. They have been told, undoubtedly by supervisers, that no un-authorized foodstuffs are to be served in the cafeteria. Do your homework - find out who is the ultimate arbiter of what gets served in your school cafeteria ( probably outside of your school) and talk to your direct supervisor and to more experienced teachers in the system. Run it by somebody in administration who you think may be receptive, but do not go over the head of your direct supervisor - that is counterproductive. Listen to what they have to say - this takes time, but it helps to create a degree of consensus for your project. Maybe, like most good ideas, somebody thought about this before - if it failed, you can find out why. Then write a respectful letter to the food service supervisor, copying all of the people that you have consulted along the way, explaining how you would work with him with your school grown produce. If you have a parents association, it may be a good thing to get them involved now that you know who your supporters are for your project. If the supervisor caves, then you have the job of implementing the project, making sure that the produce that you serve to the school is up to the certified level required by the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. If the supervisors finds a way not to do it - a standard bureacratic outcome, then keep the letter and go to plan B. Plan B. Call up the local food bank and say that your Special Education school for Adolescents has a garden and lots of fresh vegetables that you had originally thought would be used in your school but because of bureacratic rules will not be served in the cafeteria. You would like to donate these to the Food Bank and thus give the kids a sense of empowerment - they can do something to help. After this has been running for a while, have a photo op day with the principal, teachers, the students, the food bank and whatever local politician wants to horn in on a feel good photo op. Invite a journalist , TV cameras, etc. for a feel-good story. Then mention, ever so subtly, that you had originally wanted to serve the food in the cafeteria and thus lower the taxpayers expense on school lunch, but had run into a bureaucratic hurdle - and you KNOW that these rules are there for good reasons, even though you don't know why, so you have found giving the food to the Food Bank ever so much more rewarding as an experience for the students - AND ALOT LESS HASSLE THAN DEALING WITH RED TAPE. Somehow, I think that you may find that serving food from your garden at the school's cafeteria will be easier after that. But also remember to make contributions, on a regular basis to the Food Bank. Best wishes, Adam Honigman Volunteer, <A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>Clinton Community Garden</A> ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
