001[Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] microphone test one two live stream test test [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] microphone test one two three four in front of the podium microphone test for live stream [Music] testing one two three four in front of Mike testing one two three four [Music] um [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you
002[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] no no no [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice thank you everyone I hope everyone is enjoying their lunch so what you have today what you are eating today this is what our students in the High School District enjoy on a regular basis uh the newest item that you're tasting if you've got it is the shake Ramen which is actually one of my personal favorites uh what we did not serve today is
003actually my personal favorite which is the Smucker's uncrustable peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich that's actually my favorite lunch so my staff knows that uh I do want to take a moment to uh to recognize a few people in the room before we get started into the formal part of our session uh which is State superintendent Thurman thank you for coming sir uh representative perea thank you for coming we appreciate it Mr Massey from the csba thank you for coming and Victoria Victoria Torres from the Sam Wally Foundation thank you [Applause] we also want to recognize our board super our board president uh al-jabbar thank you for coming [Applause] thank you for coming and trustee Piercy thank you very much for coming we appreciate your support thank you so much uh we're going to go
004ahead and get started with our superintendent um who is going to deliver a few remarks oh here we go thank you you know first of all I want to put a shout out to Orlando and his wonderful staff you know it's uh and I want to really double down on Banking and our friends from the California Department of food and agriculture as well as our friends from as well as our friends from all the way from Washington DC who came with the Appropriations Committee as well we were getting a for superintendent Thurman and Congressman Korea we got a little education about Appropriations how how they're the most popular people here I know so thank you you know I wanted to uh just start with a quote from Bob Moses the late civil rights leader who
005founded the algebra project and he put it this way the questions that we think face the country are questions which in one sense are much deeper than civil rights there are questions which go very much to the bottom of mankind and people there are questions which have repercussions in terms of a whole International Affairs and human relations their questions which go to the very root of our society what kind of society will we be and ladies and gentlemen I'm so proud folks assembled here who are doubling down with our students in the audience to Amanda Gilmore our student trustee who represent the future not only of Greater Anaheim but through this wonderful State and Country we have so as we know there's a lot of divisiveness out there there's no question that food insecurity can
006bring people together you know I was talking to our friends over here with the Cal California Reef cow fresh right which is the old kind of food stamps program what and um is it Maribel yeah she was explaining how I mean she was grateful to be here as all of you are because what we're doing is we're connecting the need for healthy food healthy nutrition right with the with you know once you get the food stamps and what you purchase that's a huge missing piece and we also spoke about the importance of showing the world that government does work right because there's so much of a narrative out there that somehow things are broken and uh again the folks in this room representing all the institutions are showing that we can make it work and
007I think that's that deserves a round of applause I want to um I think also talk a little bit about the importance of the universal meal program and uh thanks to our governor and uh certainly Mr Thurman and those of The Advocates of the state to ensure that our families and young people have an opportunity for meals in the state of California and I think that definitely deserves a round of applause that's quite an accomplishment [Applause] and I do want to say this about our Community Schools what you're seeing is um teacher-led reform there's a lot we've been hearing a lot about school reform but this is a public school where teachers are leading reform in terms of positioning our kids to solve some of the most complex problems including food deserts in America is
008this the clicker here so we're you know I wanted to uh share the um the location of Magnolia High School this is in the middle of the food desert talking about Orange County we have some of the highest rates of food deprivation homelessness McKinney ventil numbers are among the highest in the district those are students who live in motels who sleep on the floor every day but yet come to school you know this is a huge problem in America especially in urban spaces covet exposed us they exposed the gaps of inequity in our society and again thank you to all of the stakeholders here for coming together in terms of resources and funding and ensuring that we can help solve this problem I want to give a quick numbers of uh and this is thanks
009to the Orange County Equity task force that looks at census data and data across Orange County there's about 580 census tracts in Orange County in terms of what they call the Social Progress Index Magnolia is ranked 559th out of 580. in terms of nutrition and basic care the numbers are very Stark cancer or health and wellness overall Magnolia is 575th out of 580 census tracts and uh diabetes prevalence is 550. mental health 577 and so on so these numbers are Stark yet right in front of you you know is part of the solution and creating a higher sense of awareness about nutrition and about what can be done I think gives us all great hope you're going to see a tour in a few minutes of our amazing Urban lab this is not just a
010farm this is a farm that's an urban laboratory and again thank you to our board and a Piercy especially because I know she's a gardener and she got it right away in terms of what we were talking about we took some of our covid money and we created an outdoor learning space like no other thanks again to our entire board Mr Jabar for agreeing because we took a risk right we took a risk we did not play it safe in terms of getting a lot of the other stuff but we decided hey we're going to create uh lemonade here you're going to see it and the amazing work that the entire district and has come together to create this huge opportunity um but this I like to show this is a new graphic because it
011truly is a graphic of a community school no longer do you go to school and have maybe School in one class our school at just Magnolia High School one school this model has widened the aperture of access to intellectual Capital through our partnership with Community College with ROP with our over 90 corporate and non-profit partners so school and auhsd is across the district across content and it involves people from the community including parents too we're all learning together to solve society's most pressing and Urgent problems I'm going to give you on this schema you can see it here too just one example on the right side is the Magnolia average science center here that's right here on the bottom is the Anaheim biotech program and our kids at Anaheim threw dual credit are learning how
012to genetically engineer drought resistant plants that's the plan and as you know those of you who are aware about crispr and about the technology that that has brought that America has really innovated there are billions of sequences of DNA and if our kids are taught to unlock a sequence that can help create a more dark resistant tomato they can go to the bottom there are the left is pi as Western High School we've opened one of the Region's first urban High School business incubators where our students can learn how to patent their ideas and monetize it it's all about creating a better world together for the unlimited you so we're really really proud of that in the middle is a new schema called the career preparedness systems framework and like Bob Moses civil rights leader
013from Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez Civil Rights was always about access to meaningful and purposeful jobs and so auhsd is leading the way to create more meaningful and purposeful jobs so the for the United States I mean that's what's at risk here we are unleashing the innovation of teachers to unleash the innovation of 30 000 students and if this model succeeds we can unleash the innovation of 6 million K-12 students and 60 million across the United States so again this model is teacher-led reform and I'm so honored all of us from our board to our teachers to our administrators to have just amazing teachers that you're going to you're going to meet a few of them in a second so um at this point I'd like to introduce our next speaker and we just
014saw our superintendent about a month ago so we're at Sycamore and I gotta say that um Tony Thurman has been a strong advocate for Community Schools and auhsd has been fortunate to be the recipient of proportionately the largest amount of funding from the state for Community Schools 24 million across 13 schools and thank you to Carlos Hernandez and his team for helping to make that happen that deserves I think a big round of applause and I know that Mr Thurman when he came out you know it made us feel so honored and affirmed for the work that we've done because his whole life has been dedicated to making Society a better place and certainly Community Schools are part of that but if you don't know he has been a social worker Public School parent and
015elected for more than 10 years in office and like many of our own students superintendent Thurman came from very humble beginnings his mother was an immigrant from Panama who came to San Jose California to be a teacher his father was a soldier who didn't return to his family after the Vietnam War and he met him for the first time when he was an adult after his mother died when he was six Thurman and his brother were raised by a cousin who they never met superintendent Thurman's family relied on public assistance programs and great public schools to get out of poverty and public school education allowed him to attend Temple University where he became student body president and that's why he's so connected to you young people so without further Ado please welcome our state superintendent
016Tony Thurman thank you superintendent good afternoon do we have a round of applause for a superintendent matsuda thank you an incredible leader I don't think he believed me when I said I would come back again I said if you invite me I'll come back and if you feed me yeah I'll really come back I don't get invited to a lot of meetings where it's built into the program that you actually have the opportunity to eat and to eat good food is truly a pleasure um and I just love in the slide presentation how you put it all together the um the important work happening here around healthy food the importance of the Community Schools effort the importance of career Pathways and cyber security and now today to learn about really the ability for young people
017to create patents and to become entrepreneurs and then how you opened in context that our work can make the difference for students and families who live in poverty and I appreciate that you know you you mentioned the word food stamps I kind of looked up because I haven't heard that word in a long time on because I was a food stamps recipient and so conversations about food are really important to me because in our household we often grow up without there are many times when my Tia would just say God will provide and as a youngster I was more like well we hungry what we gonna eat you know because we didn't have and um we never went without and I might have been a recipient of every USDA program that exists for students and
018families I was on the free lunch program my family did get food stamp coupons which is today the EBT card and CalFresh and we had government fees delivered to my household yeah raise your hand if you had the pleasure of government cheese right box of cheese a block of cheese and very thick plastic that you had to work to get through but if you got through it it might be the best grilled cheese or quesadilla that you had and for a family where we didn't have it was important for us to have these resources to overcome very very humble beginnings and so I'm grateful for the work I know we have some folks here from CalFresh anyone else here from USDA just stand up so we can show our appreciation um everyone from the USDA
019team thank you thank you for supporting California students and families I think you know during the pandemic we probably at the beginning of the pandemic price already about 800 million meals all across the state thank you for all the waivers all the waiver requests were written by Kim frenzel and and Jacqueline who are here today from our team I'd like to acknowledge our team nutrition services thank you Kim's hiding she doesn't want any attention but she makes it possible for us to understand how we support schools and we know that we're asking a lot it doesn't just happen you know um what we're seeing today in the Magnolia agri-science program it doesn't just happen it takes a lot of work and thank you for working with us to give us the flexibilities that we've asked
020for to care for California students and families during very difficult times I'm just going to keep coming back superintendent I'm not going to leave because I think you're providing great examples for what we need to see and I'd like to thank the members of the board who are here today I understand we have trustees Pearson here perfect and trustee Randall Trejo and of course our president president al-jabbar he's always here every time I come thank you um thank you for the great things that you're doing and also want to acknowledge the folks who have made this incredible agriscience opportunity happen Orlando griego thank you thank you and I just want to acknowledge the wonderful students who greeted me today there were many your students are really great spokespersons you know in a time when there's
021so much negativity people forget easily that great things are happening everywhere and it's easy to overlook it it's someone did a study and they said that people will always gravitate to what's negative it somehow it captures your brain for longer your students are real a reason for why we should think about the positive and what is possible and I hope that we all uh get with our students and support them around what is possible I just had a fabulous conversation today with Amanda Jacoby and Gilmore thank you let's give them a round of applause stand up and Monty is Monty still here I you know you all yeah stand up and be applauded it's really about you all and about your fellow students and you all are such great spokespersons and um you know I
022appreciate the welcome but I appreciate that you all are really about to work and you're making it happen um you know I'm joined by one of our Deputy superintendents who's here today I want to acknowledge her as well uh Nancy thank you uh for joining me here she's telling me ideas of what we should replicate because there's a lot of things here that should be replicated and so let us continue to work together you know I just want you to know that the state is here to help and a superintendent when you talked about your quote I thought about what people often say about government and there's probably a lot of things that government can get better at but the reality is is that as difficult as these last two years have been California is
023providing incredible resources to schools this is a an inflection point this is in a moment to do something that hasn't been done before not to mention you know 596 million dollars that goes directly to making sure that every hungry student will have a meal when I was on the free lunch program I had to show a orange ticket at my school to say that I was on the free lunch program and I'll tell you I got teased for that I ate my lunch under my desk because I didn't want anybody to know I was on the free lunch program and then I became an adult and I realized every single person in my school in my community was on the free lunch program and so that tells me that we have work to do it
024as a nation to get past shaming those who are hungry but we have real resources and the state is making it possible for us to have a meal two meals a day for every student regardless of their background their neighborhood their zip code everyone gets a meals so we're pleased to support you with universal meals all the resources that have been provided for infrastructure of kitchens because we know that it takes a lot of work to do this and I I have to thank Congressman Correa who has provided the federal resources to do this for infrastructure in addition to the state resources we're grateful for that we know that there's a whole lot more that needs to be done but as you put it together in that slide we have to put all these programs
025together excited to work with you on Community Schools I mean we're busy trying to figure out how to get preschool for every four-year-old to make sure that our students learn to read by third grade that there's more after school programs and tutoring programs to accelerate learning to offset the learning gaps that have grown during the pandemic we were saving lives you know in November 11 000 people were dying every day during the pandemic and people are going to tell you that there's nothing good about what happens in California but California people have been resilient and I want to thank every single person who has put it on the line for our students our teachers and our classified staff any in the room and make sure we acknowledge you all wherever you are yeah yeah thank
026you to our students and parents for your resilience to stay in California can and will do and a great part of what we do will be providing meals for families and providing healthy meals and I just uh appreciate those who talked about the powerful transformative effects that having a garden in this in this school Community can mean in a community that's ranked the way that it was that you described at a 500 and almost 90 census tracts that they wanted to rank this community near the end I I look forward to when we're celebrating how we accelerate this community racing to the top of the list and as you said there's no more important social justice than giving people a chance to earn a decent living to pay for themselves and their family so um
027I'm gonna keep coming back I'm gonna have to find an office space for me superintendent because there's so many great things happening here that we want to highlight we want to support we want to help Implement them and find ways to support the 30 000 plus students here and our six million students in the state thank you so much for everything Tiffany boss and I have a few remarks for you today and then we're going to go to the Garden or to the farm for you actually before I start to recognize my staff who prepared your meals today this is Edgar Garcia who is our manager everyone in traditional staff real quick yep um [Music] Josie Debbie Elizabeth and Leona and um they're here every day working working real hard to make sure we get
028the kids uh Edgar shared a story with me right before we began and he said that the 750 800 kids that he serves every day that uh he sets out over a thousand pieces of fruit and vegetables and they're all gone by the end of the serving period so clearly the kids like fresh fruit and vegetables which is not always typical of some schools that this is typical of Magnolias and we attribute that to sabina's hard work with the mac and the work of the of the district itself thank you guys foreign stuff that's here for a very hard thank you Edgar and I would be remiss if I did not introduce my staff behind the scenes you guys uh this is uh my two members of my management team Maria barragon and Renee Burton
029and our production lead Maggie and our student intern Elaine [Applause] there we go I don't want to take too much of your time but I did want to share with you about a little bit of news a little bit of information a little bit of facts about Food Services the Food Services Department we're a department of about 26 million dollar budget 26.7 million dollars and we have an entitlement of about almost two million dollars so for those in the room who don't know what that means we get USDA entitlement for every lunch that we serve from the previous year and right now we're at about 1.9 million dollars that we get from the USDA so those monies are translated into uh funds that we use for processing food we use it for Department of Defense
030food or produce which is used primarily for California grown produce so uh we also do what we call brown box and brown box might be everything from cranberries to canned peas or corn or something like that or even fresh or frozen vegetables uh a my department as I told you before is a K-12 program and we service about 43 000 students and we served last year approximately one six mil 1.6 million uh breakfast and over five over uh 4 million lunches we're on our way up uh during covid we are dramatically impacted and we didn't serve nearly as many meals as we have normally served and we are currently serving about of approximately 900 more meals a day for breakfast and about 1200 more meals for lunch and that is primarily due to Universal meals
031so Universal meals there are questions in the room what is universal meals so for us what Universal meals means is that all students have access to a meal breakfast and lunch on a daily basis that has always been that has always been the case in Anaheim Union High School District what is different for us though is that all students are eating at no charge that's extremely important and we have to thank uh State superintendent Thurman as well as the state of California for what they have done in my opinion California has led the way in making sure that students have access to meals on a daily basis at no charge it's something that the nation needs to do it the next step is the nation students should not have to worry about whether they have
032a meal to eat whether they can pay for a meal or not they should be able to come to school learn have a meal breakfast and lunch um I was telling Tiffany it wasn't just two years ago when we build the elementary the Anaheim elementary school district a hundred and twenty four thousand dollars for negative balances so those were students who were coming through the line during the school year 1819 who were unable to pay for their food but we fed them anyway so in turn we had to build the Elementary District the elementary District's general fund for those meals at a tune of 124 thousand dollars so during covid what we experienced with students were eating for free we saw those numbers rise as the students came back to school because they realized they
033no longer had to pay for meals which is universal meals mandate and that's a wonderful thing what covet taught us was there is great hunger in our community um we knew that by the long lines of families who were waiting for us prior to us even opening there are people in the room uh Aaron Chao was working alongside us at South Junior High School almost on a daily basis watching kids come through the line with little signs out the window saying thank you very much God bless you because the the hunger was palpable we knew that they needed us we serve them breakfast and lunch every single day Saturdays Sundays holidays we were out there and what that led us to believe what we learned from that was that when we went to community eligibility
034provision we had a choice to make the choice was do all of our schools go on community eligibility provision or do we leave some schools out Anaheim Union High School District covers five five cities on the far west side we have schools that are very low free and reduced on the far East Side we have schools that are high free and reduced so the choice we had to make was do we make all student all schools on community eligibility provision or do we not it was a no-brainer for us hunger was everywhere throughout our school district we had families were in line at Kennedy High School they were in line at Ponderosa Elementary School they were in line at catella High School in South Junior High School so it was district-wide so when we chose
035to go on to community eligibility provision we chose to do it at all schools now in a regular school year with regular reimbursements that might not have worked very well for us but because the state of California is supplementing our reimbursements by making every meal free at the free rate it works for us quite well during a regular school year that might not have made them the decision we made but for us it's the right decision to make sure that all students have access to meals we knew that there were families in our district who might have a student who goes to Oxford Academy but might also have a student who goes to Ponderosa Elementary School we knew that we didn't want families to be confused by well do I have to fill out a
036free why do I have to fill out a free and reduced application for Tiffany but I don't need to fill out a free and reduced application for Tony why do I not have to do that we wanted to make sure families knew what that all meals were free and accessible to all students throughout our campus as that's why we chose to go to community eligibility for all campuses and that's why Universal meals works for us and why we're seeing the number of students increase this number of meals that we're serving go up each day foreign we're getting funding from the state of California in the tune of about one about 1.6 million dollars for the kitchen infrastructure training funds those funds are being already being put to good use we are purchasing ovens stoves we
037are purchasing new packaging machines for our Central Kitchen we're buying warmers we're buying milk coolers and we're also being able to now have our staff have more formalized training recipe development food safety all kinds of training that they've never had before and it's because the state of California has made a commitment to Food Services departments throughout the state to make sure that our employees our our kitchens are now going to be uh state of the art so that we now have that ability to do fresh cooked meals like you have today the USDA provided us with supply chain assistance funds which helped us go which helped us purchase more minimally processed foods those that kind of funding needs to keep coming to us just as I said that it needs to be a federal response
038to Universal meals we need to keep the money coming to food service departments it's quite frankly during covid we were hurt badly in my department we lost three million dollars in 2021 we lost over two million dollars in 1920 just because of coven we're now on the rebound and we're thankful for that but it's a long way it's a Long Hill decline thank you um so we purchased a lot of produce I pulled a report for last school year and for produce alone we we purchased and served over 54 000 cases of fresh fruits and vegetables so because it's such a large part of our school meal program we really do our best to purchase California grown produce whenever we can we're able to do that because we maximize our DOD funds but also we
039work with our distributor gold star who works with over 25 local Growers suppliers and processors and of course the grant funding that we received from the California Department of food and agriculture they that has also allowed us to purchase more California grown produce as well as purchase produce from the farm here at Magnolia um I this this school year we made a big commitment um to the district to the students uh that we would purchase produce from the mac and serve it uh for lunch so uh we've we've been able to purchase a variety of different items all at different times and so uh some of the things we were able to purchase were different types of lettuces different types of tomatoes green onions cilantro even strawberries of course depending upon the quantity the availability
040the seasonality we would um we would put them on our salad bar that some of you saw we would also incorporate them into recipes and I have to give a big shout out to our Magnolia staff because they are a big part of this commitment to the students as you can imagine pulling produce from the farm it's whole it's not processed at all so they are spending extra time and effort to wash it Down chop it prepare it so this picture here is our spicy chicken wrap which you some of you got to taste so the lettuce the green onions and the tomatoes that are pictured here are from the mac and so some of the produce that was in your your spicy chicken wrap is also from the Mac um and um when we
041can this was earlier in the year we were able to get zucchini squash broccoli and Edgar and his staff washed it down chopped it prepped it seasoned it and he roasted it um I wouldn't say it was a huge hit the kids I don't think they really enjoyed it but what he did was he ended up incorporating the roasted veggies into his chili our house made chili so they really enjoy that both the spicy chicken wrap and the chili are popular entrees here at Magnolia um the menu is a huge part of our program someone had asked how do you how do you choose menu items or how do you design the menu so since auhsd spans across five different cities we do have a wide variety of student demographics so the taste preferences the
042food preferences at different sites it's all it's all different so what we aim to do is provide a good variety so that they have a diverse selection of items that they can choose from I just wanted to highlight some of our new items and some of our items that are not new but they're oldies but goodies so our turkey chorizo breakfast bowl that's something that was new this year it's scrambled eggs turkey chorizo and a whole grain tortilla bowl our teriyaki chicken is not new but it sits in a bed of brown rice steamed vegetables and then our Shake Ramen which you got to try um I had mentioned that it's a local small business and so the owner Brian he's a native to Orange County he has roots here so it's wonderful to get
043to provide that type of meal to the students but still also promote our local small business and then the walking taco it's my favorite it's ground turkey meat pinto beans and it has all of the toppings like pico de gallo shredded lettuce and it's served with baked whole grain Doritos I'm actually a product of auhsd I went in at Anaheim elementary school district I went to Clara Barton Ball Junior High and I graduated from loera high school it's really I feel like School food service has progressed so much from where when it was my time and it's really meaningful to me to get to be a part of something like that to be a part of that progression in a district that I was raised in so this is uh yeah it's very meaningful um
044the breakfast bar is another new thing for our district um we wanted to we provide free breakfast and lunch to all of our students but we wanted to entice the students to come and eat breakfast with us so at breakfast at all of our Junior highs and high schools once a week we prepare freshly made pancakes or waffles they get scrambled eggs hash browns fresh fruit and so some of the students had really positive feedback I mean some of them even said this is better than my mom has made me which that's such a compliment to us um our salad bars we have salad bars at most of our Junior highs and high schools we actually haven't had our traditional salad bar in over two and a half years because of covid but this is
045the first year we were able to bring it back this is a great way for us to provide different vegetable subgroups to the students and it looks attractive it's colorful so we're so happy to bring this back um in June of 2021 we had we were awarded the farm to school incubator Grant from the California Department of Agriculture food and agriculture this grant the goal of it was to introduce the kids to California grown produce increase their exposure and their consumption of produce and we really wanted to educate the students about where their food comes from for us in accomplishing these goals it was really important for us to provide that type of education early on so that by the time they came to us in seventh and eighth grade they already had that background
046of you know healthy eating and where their food comes from I wanted to recognize our amazing team because we were able to do a lot of wonderful things with the grant funding um but today we have Anna Luciano athenas she's this um supervising Public Health nutritionist for Orange County healthcare agency we have Meredith Ibanez uh she's the program manager for nutrition services and then we have Nigel Napoleon who is the wellness coordinator for Anaheim elementary school district and then picked your tears George and how there are garden experts so for me what really came out of this grant is the collaboration the relationships we built with Orange County healthcare agency and Elementary School District um it's really it's it's been wonderful and that's what's going to sustain us even after the grant is over um
047just a little bit about our grant um we had a school garden component it's starting off at our elementary schools but we hope to we eventually it's going to run into our our high schools and Junior highs so last year through the cdfa grant we were able to implement Gardens in six of our school sites so we did site assessments we were able to determine where the garden was going to go what type of gardening to use because they were also different and so we reached over 30 teachers and 800 students just through those six sites of course over the grant over the course of the grant we're going to expand our efforts to Anaheim Union High School District sites to help with help improve existing Gardens or Implement Gardens that you see here at
048the sites thank you to make it special for the students after we did the planning and many many trips to Home Depot we had a planting day with the kids so they had this really special session where they got to they were educated about where their food comes from they provide they were providing nutrition education by Nigel and the Orange County healthcare agency and then they got Hands-On learning like they got to get in there and get their hands dirty and learn that planting a garden only takes very little you don't need a lot of space very simple tools I wanted to share this before and after this is Orange Grove Elementary so you can see in February this was the garden site it had one garden bed with not a lot growing in it
049and there was just bushes I mean we weren't really using it and then a month later it all got torn out and there's four large garden beds there and then two months later from that because of the students and teachers were maintaining the garden so well it was thriving they had cucumbers Peppers different kinds of lettuces tomatoes so thank you it was it was really nice that they got to see that before they left for the summer and then we also had a harvest celebration for each of the six School sites where we got to Orange County healthcare agency came in they did cooking demos the principal actually selected a recipe to feature and it it featured the garden produce so they got to incorporate that and this one was Orange Grove it's a marinated
050cucumber salad it was really tasty and then the kids got to take home a little gardening kit so that they could Garden at home with their parents and then as far as other than this you know the the garden aspect we wanted to make sure to incorporate the cafeteria and of course the classroom so for the menu side of it we were integrating California grown produce every month we we featured a highlighted fruit every month so one month we did blood oranges which most kids heard the word blood oranges and they didn't know what to think but we were able to slice them in our kitchens and then we served them at breakfast and then we also prepare tasting kits where Nigel took them did nutrition education in the classroom so they the point of
051that was to get multiple exposure of blood oranges so that they would recognize it they would know it they would take it they would go home and hopefully recognize it in the store with their parents so that they would then bring it to their parents and say hey let's try this um we will be out at the Garden shortly When Tiffany talks about the classroom connection um in the cafeteria classroom connection one of the most important things for us is Outreach to students and parents so quite often when Mr Saldivar was the principal at Anaheim high school and when Carlos was a principal principals often invite us to come and do a coffee with the principal we take over the meeting we talk to parents about school food service we tell them all about what
052all the regulations we have to follow and then the most important and most popular part of the meeting is when parents get to taste and what you guys did today they get to taste what their children eat and that is extremely important to us so the parent that type of Outreach parents understand what their parents have what their children have access to on a daily basis however the most important part of our job is to meet with students is to find out what students want to eat so our menus in my opinion if students if I don't like it makes no difference because if students like it that's the most important piece of the puzzle so we meet with students on a regular basis some are friends from the from Appropriations asked the kinds of
053questions about how do things get on the menu I'll tell you in the High School District sometimes it's the most challenging looking at our two three students here their tastes change rapidly so we have to be nimble we have to be flexible and we have to be able to change with them to provide them with what they want so we listen to them on a daily date we listen to them on a regular basis and meet with them on a regular basis also finally I want to talk and and my part before I hand it over to Monty is to just talk briefly about supply chain shortages despite the fact that supply chain shortages have not eased for us and I will tell you just one quick little story the beginning of last school year
054Tiffany started reaching out to our distributor on a daily basis to find out what we would receive what we would not receive and what we'd be substituted on a daily basis we would receive I would all of us would receive an email from Tiffany and it would have anywhere from 100 to 200 items literally that we would not receive that would be substituted or that would would be uh shorted we thought that would get better quite frankly it hasn't the beginning of this school year we started to get emails from Tiffany I was extremely happy it's like oh my God five ten items awesome about three weeks ago I opened an email on a Sunday got an email from Tiffany on a Sunday that's never a good thing 200 items what happened despite that our
055commitment is to our children our commitment is to make sure that they get what they want on a daily basis our commitment is to follow our menu our commitment is to make sure that they have access to healthy fresh food on a daily basis so we substitute we substitute and we find a way to feed them and that's what we're doing on a daily basis and we're proud to do it I'm going to turn it over to Monty thank you so right now there are 23.5 million Americans including six and a half million children living in in what is so-called a food desert which is mainly in inner cities and rural areas for your information a food desert is a geographical location where the residents have little to no access to Affordable fresh food hello
056everyone my name is and I live in a food desert I am an immigrant who left Iraq and ended up in Anaheim California the same Anaheim known for the happiest place on Earth Disneyland located just miles from beautiful Southern California beaches and home of the Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim while my family has benefited from the land of opportunity and have been able to make the better life my parents envisioned for us um myself and my my brother my sister one thing that we have left behind is access to healthy and nutritious food I in fact lived on a farm in Iraq and grew the food we ate but now my family and I live in a modest apartment on one of the main streets in California called Beach Boulevard will
057take you to Disneyland Knott's Berry Farm Pacific Coast Highway and many other attractions however you may need to drive drive past the many hotels motels Corners in which illegal activities are publicly displaced such as prostitution and Drug cells in addition to these many vices the one Vice that is often that is often overlooked is ignoring the healthy food crisis in poor neighborhoods like my own in the words of Rod Finley the gorilla Gardener himself from South Central LA he says the food deserts are where the drive-throughs are killing more than the drive-bys this is because in these neighborhoods there's an abundance of fast food restaurants convenience stores and gas stations rather than grocery stores and farmers markets in fact I live right next to Taco Bell when I say right next to I meet right
058next to we actually share a wall the closest grocery store to my house is a food for less that is almost two miles away so one of my my family and I get hungry it's much more convenient for us to walk 100 feet to the Taco Bell rather than trick the two miles to go to the grocery store down the street for many families in my neighborhood our daily diet includes fast food snacks from vending machines and also treats from the local 7-Elevens we know conception of unhealthy Foods leads to health concerns such as obesity diabetes and heart failure because of the high sugar salt saturated fat and processed ingredients in these Foods some may be quick to blame families for allowing this diet but are never quick to help fix it fast food places
059have attempted to provide healthier options however have you ever ordered a salad from McDonald's Carl's Jr or even Burger King well that's a bit of a trick question because they actually don't offer salads on their menus but a healthier fast food option um yeah healthier factory options such as Subway actually does however the last time I was at the subway instead of a sandwich I tried to order something a bit better I have a salad instead of paying 529 for a 16 sub the salad costs 7.78 an additional two dollars and 49 cents for substituting the bread with fresh veggies that's an almost 50 increase in price to get a healthier option that is society's way of telling me that I have to spend an extra two dollars and 49 cents so that I have
060a lower chance of dying from a heart attack becoming obese and suffering from high cholesterol what should I do when my family can't afford a 50 markup for a healthier life the only the only way this will change is if we collectively call for a change this is why I am proud and I'm grateful to be part of that art that to be to be a part of the Anaheim Union High School District because we focus on student engagement and student voice as a student ambassador for Magnolia High School which you guys are all at right now obviously um I get to represent the student body and their concerns and their needs and their assets it was because of student voices that our district took a dirt lot that was behind our science buildings and
061turned it into an urban farm called The Magnolia agriscience Community Center which is a Mac those are the produce yeah the vision of the Mac is to nourish your students and community members but also create job training skills and experiences to educate students and the community on sustainable food practices and ecological issues we want to turn Anaheim from a food desert to a food Healthcare and Civics Oasis now I'd like to end with giving you some food for thought imagine fast food restaurants would make salads cheaper than burgers imagine vending machines stocked with high with foods high in fiber and nutrients imagine being able to solve food deserts climate change and health care now instead of imagining I invite you to be a part of the change bring awareness about food deserts invest in student
062voice and vote for people and politics that will support us students and families like my own together we will make big changes thank you so what you've all been looking forward to is we're going to go to the mac and you can leave your stuff here there's some water on the side if you want to take it with you or you can just come back and have a water when you get back I didn't want to make one just real observation is that what's unique about Anaheim Union High School District is the relationship that food services has with the ed services side of the house uh and I and I don't mean to separate them but I think that I look around the room and I see Kim kind of Nod her head it's unusual
063in school districts where that relationship exists Food Services tends to be a little bit of an island and we kind of operate and we go along but we have a relationship with ed services and it's powerful and it's meaningful and I'm thankful for it thank you for being here for today thank you yes sir okay so we're gonna go out this door here you're gonna follow Sabina