001Hello, I am Barb Bora, nutrition director for Sun Prairie Schools. Welcome to my state of the plate presentation. Today I will be sharing with you some of the highlights from the 2425 school year and look at some initiatives for the 2526 school year. Our scorecard initiatives for this year included offering four new menu items that corresponded with the district's identified heritage months, meeting with students to get feedback on menus and working on our budget to be sustainable while also meeting goals to upgrade equipment and provide good quality food, but also balance our revenues and expenses. Most new menu items served this year were strategically added to address equity within our initiative to reflect the culinary culture of our diverse student body. Students within the district had the opportunity to taste test several different multicultural foods
002tied to specific heritage months. For Hispanics, Latinx Heritage Month, we offered new burrito bowls, beef nachos, fiesta beans, and churros. For the Royal Oaks Cultural Week, our own da Cannon, showed our cooks how to make Puerto Rican rice and beans, which we served up as samples to the students there. Jennifer Yang also shared mung sausage with students at Royal Oaks that we purchased and cooked for the event. For Indigenous People's Month, we served a meal of fish sandwiches, roasted butternut squash, long grain and riled rice along with blueberries and strawberries twice in November. This menu was quite popular with the students, and we added these items to the rest of our menus throughout the school year. In May for AsianPacific Islander Month, we offered every student at the elementary schools a sample of freshlymade chana
003masala. We also introduced a ramen bar at our middle schools and high schools. The ramen noodles with ramen broth topped with their choice of turkey medallions or shredded pork, hard-boiled eggs, and assorted vegetables were a huge hit with students, as were the chicken pot stickers. We met with students uh from the Black Student Union at East High School to help us plan a special menu for Black History Month. They asked for chicken drumsticks, cornbread, sweet potato fries, and green beans. We were happy to accommodate their request. Other new menu items this year included meatball subs, western burgers, mac and cheese bar, Swedish meatballs and gravy, lasagna roll-ups, and roasted Brussels sprouts. To obtain more feedback from students, I met with four face classes at Central Heights and did additional taste testing at other schools. Everyone
004in our department has been made aware of the budget challenges we faced and we worked as a as a team to reduce our food waste and increase our revenue. We did a great job increasing our revenue by reving up our catering and alleart programs. We offered catering for 68 different events this year which brought in revenue of approximately $37,000 up from last year's cad catering revenue of only $7,000. All cart items are offered at all middle schools and high schools. The revenue from that program was approximately $396,000 this year. Another source of revenue will come from providing meals for the Boys and Girls Club of Sun Prairie this summer. The summer food service program will feed members ages 0 to 18 breakfast, lunch, and snack. The reimbursement from USDA is higher for those meals than
005it is for our regular food service program at the schools. The amazing hunger heroes program helps pay down negative meal balances acrewed by students throughout the school year. By doing so, it ensures that every student can enjoy a nutritious meal without worry. At the same time, it allows our district to keep investing in great learning opportunities for all students rather than using money to cover these costs. National School Breakfast and School Lunch Weeks are our favorite weeks in the school year. We get to promote our programs with fun themes, special visitors, and creative menus. During school breakfast week, we pick one day that all students can eat for free so that caregivers and students can both enjoy the benefits of our meals and see how it could benefit their households. The school nutrition department has
006purchased several Fork Farms hydroponic growing machines for use in classrooms. We purchase the seeds every year as well and students grow lettuce for us to use in our salad bars and in our main entree salads. It has been an amazing collaborative effort to provide this outstanding product to our cafeterias. This year we purchased a new walk-in freezer for the Westside Elementary School kitchen. This freed up much needed work space in the kitchen by removing the four standalone freezers in the kitchen, which we were able to then use at other kitchens throughout the district. This slide shows you how our daily student participation for breakfast and lunch is continuing to increase each year. We are proud of the great quality of our food and the caring customer service our staff provides to students every day. Negative
007balances have increased this year. Many families are struggling to provide their growing children with the healthy options we offer them. Families know that we will always feed their children a meal whether they have funds available at the time of purchase or not. Our free and reduced percentage remained very close to last year's percentage of 35%. If SNAP SNAP benefits are decreased next year due to a change in the national budget, I expect our free and reduced percentage to decrease as caregivers will not automatically be approved for free meals and will have to apply for benefits. Fund 50 is the school nutrition department's budget. that is a standalone budget and we do not receive money from the school district general fund unless we run a deficit. In that case, fund 10 will have to cover the
008loss. As touched on previously, we are working to increase our revenues and decrease our costs. Another source of revenue for 2425 was the sale of old unused equipment in the amount of $14,689. For the 2526 school year, we are also increasing meal prices to expand our revenue. These increases are due to increased production and food costs as well as USDA requirements. The nutrition department will be reducing labor costs in the coming school year. In addition, Sun Pereé school districts will pay the credit card fee when processing their payments in 2526 as those costs were $47,742 in the 2425 school year. Scorecard initiatives for the 2526 school year are outlined on my last slide today. It is similar to previous years, but our main objective is always to keep students and families coming back for more
009of our meals because they are enjoyable and costeffective. They are also healthy, freshly made, and served with love. Thank you for your time and attention today. [Music]