OGS Awards $5,000 To District For 'Innovative' School Meal Program

Posted in november, 2005

The South Colonie Central School District has been honored with a $5,000 Best Practices Award in recognition of its innovative and creative use of government commodity foods as part of the school meal program. The award, sponsored by the state Office of General Services and the USDA, was presented to District Food Service Director Renee´ Hanks.

OGS, which administers the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Distribution Program in New York State, began offering the Best Practices Awards in 2001 as a way to identify and acknowledge schools that have successfully implemented innovative ideas using these government commodity foods (like meat, cheese, fruits and vegetables) as part of their school meal programs.

OGS was particularly impressed with South Colonie's plan to rewrite its school menus to better incorporate the use of government commodities. The district accomplished this by changing to the Enhanced Food-Based Menu Plan created by the USDA, which incorporates larger servings of fruits and vegetables, while still managing to serve more popular items that are "cool" with students.

The district started serving a "Grab and Go" taco inside an open bag of Frito Lay's new trans fat-free Baked Nacho Dorito chips. This taco uses several government commodities including pork and beef taco filling, shredded processed cheese and salsa.

"We're very pleased with this award and proud of our meal staff for what they do to make our food program work," Hanks said. "Our personnel face many challenges every day in trying to feed our student customers nutritious, tasty, cost effective meals in a limited amount of time."

"The USDA Commodity Food Program is critical to the successful financial operation of our school meal programs," she added. "The quality and variety of the meats, fruits and vegetables are exceptional and our ability to be able to further process these commodities into more popular foods is a huge benefit to our collective programs."

Each year, OGS solicits applications from schools across New York State that participate in the Federal Food Distribution Program and $5,000 awards are given to those schools that have exhibited best practices in the areas of creative commodity practices and innovative operational procedures. The grant applications are judged based on six criteria that include: innovative procedures, increased quality of services, collaboration, commitment to program excellence, cost effectiveness and presentation. The award winning ideas are then shared with other schools in the state.