BSSD’s new food program and the driving force
behind it
By Bay Stephens EBS LOCAL EDITOR
BIG SKY – For 10 years, Lindsie Hurlbut
told her friend Whitney Littman, “I want to be the school lunch lady.” For most
of that time Littman thought she was joking, but Hurlbut’s serious intent
eventually became clear.
Since its genesis three years ago, the primary
goal of the Big Sky School District Wellness Committee—which Littman oversees
and on which Hurlbut used to serve—has been integrating nutrition into
academics. Through her early involvement, Hurlbut realized her dream of being BSSD’s
lunch lady, or Food Program Coordinator, beginning in the 2018-2019 school
year.
The program she’s orchestrated is a multifaceted
hit.
Since Hurlbut started, the number of BSSD
students eating hot lunch daily has doubled, and she’d served 19,000 hot
lunches to date by the end of February, according to Littman. Students and
teachers alike are exposed to a variety of local foods, unlike the conventional
image that “hot lunch” evokes for most people, thanks to a grant from the
Moonlight Community Foundation that allows Hurlbut to order from regional
growers.
“This is an agricultural state that we
live in,” Hurlbut said. “It’s important for kids to know where their food’s
coming from and how it tastes different when it’s grown local, and the life
skills of learning how to cook whole foods.”
In March, Hurlbut won $500 for the food
program in the 2019 Montana School Eats photo contest for assembling the most
appealing arrangement of local foods. BSSD Art Educator Megan Buecking took the
photo.
“There’s no way we couldn’t have won
thanks to Ms. Buecking’s amazing photo and the Moonlight grant,” Hurlbut said.
The program not only improves the nutritional
value of the food offered at the school; it furnishes special learning
opportunities for other classes, such as Social Studies teacher Tony Coppola’s
11th grade history class.
For the first week of April, Coppola’s
class traded in reading and writing essays about Vietnam for making a
Vietnamese buffet to feed the whole school and any parent who wanted to join
for lunch. Coppola’s class joined Hurlbut in the school kitchen during their
history class periods throughout the week, then served the meal that Friday,
April 5.
“Food is one of the biggest parts of a
culture,” Coppola said. “It defines the culture, what they eat, how they
prepare it. It brings them together. You learn a lot from a culture’s diet.”
Along with providing a supplementary arena
of education, the food program has opened other teaching opportunities, such as
a compost program in which food scraps are given to Dr. Kate Eisele’s 8th grade
science class. The class recently completed the first compost batch of the year,
which will be used by a Big Sky landscaper; in the future, Hurlbut said they
hope to use the compost for a school gardening program.
The food program has also fostered workplace
camaraderie, as more teachers have chosen to eat lunches together this year,
Coppola said. Along with bringing teachers together, the program offers a
special way for families to connect over food.
Each quarter, Hurlbut hosts a family cook
night in which multiple families come to the school, prepare a meal together
and sit down to eat with everyone.
“It’s really just to get kids cooking,
and parents to learn new recipes and ideas,” Hurlbut said. “The last one we did
was sushi, which was just fun.”
It’s not uncommon to find community
members volunteering to prepare and serve lunches alongside Hurlbut in the
kitchen, who said she couldn’t do it without her dedicated staff. Despite the
helping hands, Hurlbut admits it’s a lot of work.
“It’s crazy, my days are kind of insane,”
said Hurlbut, who arrives at the school at 6 a.m. to prepare food for the
breakfast program, then transitions to making lunches, which can amount to 240
a day.
“If anything, I think she probably just
needs more help so she can take a break,” Coppola said.
Littman echoed Coppola, adding that the
program had met a majority of their goals early, shifting the conversation toward
demand management and support for Hurlbut. Despite the workload, Hurlbut is
excited about what has been accomplished this year.
“My number one goal was to change the
perception of school lunch,” Hurlbut said.
With monthly Try Something New days and
Salad Bar Fridays, as well as how hot lunch counts don’t fluctuate with menu
items, it seems she’s hit the mark.
“We’re at a point now this far into the
year that the kids just trust what we do,” she said. “… My numbers everyday are
consistent. Kids don’t even read the menu, they just get hot lunch.”
Ultimately, it’s about education and food’s
role is key.
“No kid should be in school if they’re
hungry,” Littman said. “You can’t be a good learner [if you are]. And we’re
asking a lot of our kids, so that’s pretty important. The wellness committee
feels like we’re really entwined with the mission of our school. We think food
and nutrition are really important for successful education for all kids.”
