State High menu changes promote health

New items on the State College Area High School breakfast menu could help encourage more students to buy a morning meal.

And a new breakfast cart near the entrance and main office of the high school South Building can also help students get breakfast more conveniently.

The new items and food cart are part of an effort to promote health and wellness, and were unveiled earlier in the week.

The district’s food service department and agriculture-based programs were showcased Tuesday morning to representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Food service director Megan Schaper handed out samples of homemade baked breakfast goods, as Debbie Panulla, who called herself the “breakfast lady,” was stationed at the food cart selling a la carte snacks.

It included homemade, whole-wheat cinnamon buns and breakfast pizza with fruit, and packaged prebaked goods like Pop-Tarts.

Items were also sampled by USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Katie Wilson, who toured the school.

School administration focused its tour on its breakfast cart, and aquaponics lab that biology teacher Jack Lyke uses to teach class.

Lyke said aquaponics is a production method that uses fish with hydroponics to grow plants.

The lettuce his classes help grow is used in some school meals.

“It’s exciting to see staff and students so invested in programs that give back to the school,” Wilson said. “When they’re involved in the process, they’re more likely to actually eat school breakfast or lunch.”

Food service

Wilson said she was invited to speak at a food service conference Tuesday night at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel about the “new look of school meals.”

The conference was held in response to congressional changes to regulations of what school meals should and should not include.

School lunches must provide students with a third of the calories they need during the school day, Schaper said. It also must provide a certain kind of meat or meat alternate, fruit, and grain products that must be all whole-grain, Schaper added.

Cinnamon buns were added to the menu this year after an implied request from a parent, Schaper said.

“She didn’t quite come out and ask for it, but said their child would get school breakfast more often if there were foods they liked, like cinnamon buns,” Schaper said. “She said if they got breakfast at the school, it would financially help the family.”

The parent Schaper referred to has a child in the high school who is on the free and/or reduced breakfast and lunch program.

That could save a family up to $3 a day for lunch and $1.80 for breakfast, per student, at the secondary level.

Students are eligible for the program based on family size and household income.

Schaper said 16 percent of district students are on the program.

On Tuesday morning, the school served cinnamon buns for the first time in three years, Schaper said.

The baked goods were made by food service staff using whole-wheat ingredients.

“We worked hard to come up with a recipe that would taste good and (be) within regulations,” Schaper said.

About four dozen cinnamon buns are made the day before they’re sold, Schaper said.

The new items came with the grand opening of the breakfast cart.

Because of the high school project construction, several changes were made to the facility that moved the student entrance and main office to the back of the South Building — on the opposite side of the cafeteria.

“We wanted to make access to breakfast more efficient,” Superintendent Bob O’Donnell said.

The school had a “soft launch” of the cart Monday, and held a “grand opening” Tuesday, Schaper said.

The food cart is open weekdays from 7:40 a.m. to 8:10 a.m.

Ag projects

Wilson said that for every business trip she takes, she also tries to visit schools, organizations and other agencies in the area, and uses what she learns to help inspire other institutions.

“I have a log book to take notes of what people are doing,” Wilson said. “I travel all over the country and have been to so many places and intermix ideas that could help others.”

She said a push at the federal level that affects schools across the country is the Farm to School initiative.

The State College Area School District received a $26,355 Seed Change grant earlier in the school year to enhance ag-based projects.

Teacher Andrew Wilson was given $1,000 so that he and two students — seniors Sal Alhabib and Izaiah Bokunewicz — could build a vertical garden.

Bokunewicz said he helped set up the garden in October against a wall of the high school North Building adjacent to the main office.

Bokunewicz said the vertical garden was made as an example for what other schools can also create.

He debriefed Katie Wilson about the project.

And Wilson said schools are most successful when there are student-based project initiatives.

“This is exactly the kind of thing we like to see that ties in hands-on student learning with giving back to the school and community,” she said.

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 10:38 AM with the headline "State High menu changes promote health."