Page 30 - Priorities #52 2012-March/April

30
The Green Page
A letter from the Priory Sustainability Coordinator
Dear Priory Community –
I spent some time in early February filling out an application, trying to garner a “Green Ribbon Schools” award on the school’s behalf. Green Ribbon School is a program developed and sponsored by the Department of Education that works to recognize schools whose operations are environmentally healthy and sustainable.
Green Ribbon Schools program highlights the future opportunities for implementation of sustainable practices, technologies, and lesson plans at the Priory. The ‘Environmental Health’ pillar, for instance, presents options and opportunities for making the campus a healthier place for all members of the community. Additionally, the “Outdoor Activities” pillar of the award helps to rationalize the school’s emphasis on the middle school outdoor education program, while simultaneously suggesting that the school do more to cultivate meaningful connections between Priory students and their local natural environment.
In other news, you may have noticed the new menu options that are trumpeted daily in the school bulletin. Cuban Pork, Curried Chicken, Butterleaf lettuce salad with bleu cheese, walnuts and pears. These are some of the new offerings concocted by the school’s chef, Peter Agoston. And while the menu descriptions advertise the menu offerings on the basis of their taste, there is more to the story, and a bigger benefit to the school community is at work here.
Working together, a Priory parent, Valerie Wookey, Peter Agoston, and I looked critically at the sustainability of the school food service. Valerie Wookey took cues from food service programs at other schools to develop a line-item mission statement that could be used to sustainably source ingredients for meal preparation. On the basis of three main categories – effects on student health, the environment, and ethics – we developed a set of policies for the school’s kitchen to try to abide by: purchase and serve eggs from farms that only raise cage-free chickens (an ethical choice), use cooking oils free of trans fats (a student health choice); purchase organic fruits, when in season, from local growers (environmental choice). Peter’s cooking turns these ingredients