Latest / The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District / Episode #3 Ben Atkinson, Assistant Director of Child Nutrition

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Episode #3 Ben Atkinson, Assistant Director of Child Nutrition · The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Recess Podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Speciati, the proud superintendent of the Auburn School District.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: We bring you this Recess Podcast to share the stories of the programs and the people who make Auburn such a special place.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really an opportunity for me to share some of the things that I see behind the scenes that many of you may not be able to.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we have some incredible stories to tell.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: This week is a great example of that.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am joined by my very special guest, Mr.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Atkinson.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben is the Assistant Director of Child Nutrition for the Auburn School District.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He comes to Auburn School District with more than 15 years of experience, most recently working at Harborview Medical Center, where he was a manager and before that was a dietitian.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben has also been an instructor at the University of Washington.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Ben, welcome.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate being here.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're we're thrilled to have you here.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have really amazing things going on in child nutrition that the audience is going to learn about in uh just a few minutes.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But we start our podcast with my favorite question, which is tell us about your favorite teacher.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm a little bit biased because both my parents were teachers.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they taught in the Bainbridge Island, uh in Central Kitsap School Districts, uh, North Kitsap School District as well.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So really uh I don't want to say we owned the peninsula, but you know.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh it was interesting.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Walla Walla over the summer, just on a little vacation with some friends, and we go to this uh wine bar, uh, and I knew it was owned by somebody from Bainbridge Island.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um turns out this person just loved my mother, had her as a sixth grade teacher, and is the reason why this person actually went into teaching before uh breaking off and going into the wine business.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've got probably dozens of stories like that about my mom, where just r random people will come up to me and um, you know, tell me about how my mom did something to change the course of their life um and get them kind of moving in a more positive direction.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think it's so amazing uh hearing that about a teacher.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think one of the most viral social media posts we did was um just ask who was your favorite teacher, and you know, hundreds and hundreds of people chimed in, current teachers, teachers from back in the day like your parents.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's just a tremendous story.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is Ben Atkinson, our assistant director of child nutrition.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ben has some uh training and expertise as a dietitian.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the things that I think stood out about your application for this job.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um before we get into how the program runs and and share a lot of really interesting facts about child nutrition in Auburn, uh talk about the nutrition part for a minute because it's it's really important.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about the relationship between food and health and and you know a healthy lifespan.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how do we build our menus and our requirements for literally what kids grab on the line so that they're getting a healthy diet?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a department of agriculture, um, and that department goes by the name USDA.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they really set the guidelines for what uh food is served in schools, and um um they they create rules based on all of that that breadth of knowledge.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, there there are some basic things we know about nutrition.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we know that if you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, you're likely to live a pretty long healthy life.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: We know, you know, on the other hand, we know that if you eat a lot of food that is processed in some way, so food that maybe doesn't look like it would look on the farms, um, we know that that food um is not as healthy for our bodies.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: They really separate food into like groups of food.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so some people might have seen like a food pyramid or a food plate separating different types of food, you know, fruits, vegetables, uh things with protein in them, like meats and seeds and cheese, yogurt, um, also grains, rice, beans, tortillas, pasta, breads.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um also has milk as a separate group.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and milk does have good things for our body.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the five groups of foods that we um need to allow the kids to choose from.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with Auburn, we have so many um amazing uh types of people here, people from all over the world, uh people who have grown up here their whole lives, and you know, it runs the gamut.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um so even though we have these rules, you know, there are schools in the Auburn School District where there are, for instance, a lot of people from India.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we can really tailor um the foods at that school to reflect uh the students that go there.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I really like that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that isn't all that unlike what we do with our curriculum.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we have state standards, they're based on national standards, but uh we pick the curriculum that's right.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's approved by uh a committee which has representation of our staff and community.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh parents can review materials, the local school board approves them, so it's that little push and pull with uh the big framework, uh, but really tailoring it to what's right for Auburn.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I find that really reassuring that that we do that.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Every community is gonna have a little bit different need, but nutrition is you know nutrition.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The studies uh uh are are consistent, of course, across country.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so let's shift gears a little bit.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most people listening probably uh either can remember the school cafeteria when they went to school or they've been in one of ours, um, and they may know the frontline, you know, uh the the kitchen staff, the cook, um, but don't really know what goes into a child nutrition services department such as we have in Auburn.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Jen Campbell Aiken is our great leader in CNS and Auburn.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have a small but mighty team.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So just talk about a little bit about overview of the department and then how many staff do we have working in schools and tell us about them.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean we should really start with the the staff in the schools.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: We have over a hundred people working in all 24 of our schools, and I think one important thing to note about the Auburn School District and its nutrition department is that we make all of the food that we serve for breakfast, lunch, and even dinner in some schools.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: We make all of that in each school.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I say that because there are uh quite a few school districts that make all their food in what's called a central kitchen.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like a it's it's pretty cool to see.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a big warehouse where there's big equipment and there's, you know, really like trucks coming in and out of the uh that big facility.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what that means is that food also gets kind of stored and reheated and put on trucks to go out to all the schools each day.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what I like about the Auburn School District is our food is fresh.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you're eating lunch, like we just cooked that food 20 minutes ago, you know, um, so there's no um loss of food quality, it still smells good, it still tastes great.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and like I said, we have over a hundred people working in all 24 of our schools.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I uh I think that's that's one real strength of our school district where we're we're really making that food fresh and on demand for the the kids.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um we in each of our schools we have a kitchen manager, uh so that's really the the boss of the kitchen.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they're um really well trained and highly skilled folks um who have worked in restaurants, who have worked in other commercial kitchens, and they really know their way around all that kind of big equipment, all the ovens, all the you know, the big mixers, um, all that all that stuff.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's um they're really the ones that make the magic happen um in uh coordination with the the team uh there in the kitchen.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um the kitchens can have anywhere from three to uh seven or eight, uh, depending on the size of the school.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think one really cool thing about the Auburn School District um is that in our high schools we do have uh culinary arts teachers and paraeducators working side by side with the nutrition department staff, and we also have high school students in there cooking the food for their classmates uh that are about to eat breakfast or lunch.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's such a cool thing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's uh really I think a unique and wonderful opportunity for our students, and I had the opportunity to eat school lunch recently prepared by uh your staff and the culinary students, and got to see them uh uh at work, so to speak, learning learning the trade, learning what's behind the scenes and and just doing a phenomenal job.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've been blown away by the pride and dedication of our CNS team, and I just want to share a quick story.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't have a lot of fond memories of the pandemic.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh probably most people don't, but very uh near the top is getting to visit our sites where we were distributing food uh right when everything was shut down, not just schools, but you know, much of society uh in those initial months of the pandemic where we really didn't know what was happening.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was conflicting information, wear a mask, don't wear a mask, you know, all of this stuff.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I I maybe you recall how long we went without serving meals.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been a week.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very brief period of time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point, we were open uh on school weeks, on breaks.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: We finally, about a year into it, had to shut it down for a week just so our staff could rest.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we worked with the community and uh and brought in another source of food for some take-home food for families for a week just so we could give our CNS staff a break.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I remember in that time where I mean a lot of people were really afraid to be out of their house unless they absolutely had to.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, your staff was coming to work every day, and I would visit sites and they would tell me consistently, I'd go from school to school and I'd hear the same story.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our kids need us, our families need us, our community is depending on us.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, my neighbor lost her job, or they can't work because of the pandemic, and they can't afford food, and we have to be there for them.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I'm getting chills right now just sharing that story, and I've I've tried to kind of trumpet the work of our great kitchen staff in the most trying of circumstances.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that showed me the amazing heart of the people that we have doing this work.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I also don't like to think about that time very much.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was really scary, uh, dangerous uh time, but you're right.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh we we actually there was no break in the service.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh I'm trying to remember the exact timeline, but you know, I know the governor said we're we're shutting the schools down on this day, and you know, we were here Monday morning uh after that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh serving food, you know, basically in the parking lot of each school.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was yeah, I think um I think that really helped um keep kids connected to the the schools.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well thanks, Ben.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is Ben Atkinson, Assistant Director of Child Nutrition.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the school lunch and breakfast program today.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and s start with just uh some information.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: How many students does the Auburn School District Child Nutrition Program serve daily?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: So uh as of October uh of this school year, we are serving 11,000 lunches each day.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: We are serving almost 7,000 breakfasts, 6,800 if you want to get exact.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're serving about 175 snacks in the afternoon for students who are you know at school getting help with homework, those sorts of things.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and new this year, we are serving uh about 150 dinners uh at two of our high schools uh every day.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and I'm guessing the average person listening to this has no idea that you know the breakfast, lunch, and at least uh in a few places, dinner uh served by the by the schools.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: To put this in perspective, we have just under 18,000 students district wide.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we still have some kids bringing their lunch, of course, uh, but our participation has grown uh when we qualified for the community eligibility program.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is uh I'll give the quick overview so uh Ben can just talk about the service that we provide.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Community Eligibility CEP allows uh it's it's a part of the USDA program that allows districts to include all students uh for free breakfast, free lunch, and uh that's fully funded by mostly by the federal government, a little bit by the state.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's really transformed how students access breakfast and lunch.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about what it means for our students and families?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um I also have one person whose sole job it was to process paper and electronic applications for free or reduced meals.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're if you've been in the school district for a while, you might remember three or four years ago, before the pandemic, we um we had you fill out a form uh and you would give us some financial information, talk about how many people lived in your house, and that would either qualify you or not qualify you for free lunch.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't do that anymore.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we would we would process uh something like ten to twelve thousand pieces of paper or electronic uh applications every year.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that is such a nice thing for families not to have to do anymore.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so take that a step further.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why uh I I know this is a softball, but why is it important for students to eat, you know, a healthy, nutritious breakfast, a lunch?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: How does that help them as a student and with their own wellness?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I th I think if you were to ask any teacher in the school district, if if they have a student that shows up in the morning or even afternoon, um, and that student hasn't had their basic needs met, you know, whether that's enough sleep, um, you know, somebody caring for them, uh giving them some support and respect, um, a place to live, and and food to eat.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have those bases covered, that student is not gonna do well in school.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Ma mountains of research to support this.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a student who's not um ready to learn in those those basic ways and not having their basic needs met, um they're not gonna live up to their potential.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that is um that's the least we can do.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: We need to give kids a a good start.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's talk about uh in our school district we have a very diverse district.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we are proud of how we've grown, uh we have cultural diversity, linguistic diversity.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what comes along with that is food diversity, really.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um can can you talk about how our menus have evolved as our students and uh their families and cultures have evolved.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we we really make it a point uh not just in the nutrition department, but we we make it a point to um support and value our students wherever they're at and wherever they're from.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you can see this in our menus.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I like to cook, I have uh some expertise in that, um, but I I really can't be um, you know, a Ukrainian food expert, I can't be a uh I can't be an Afghani food expert.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so while I do uh a lot of work in the kitchens um testing recipes, I was uh uh this week we're working on a ramen noodle recipe uh that's vegetarian also.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um I I really get a lot of um uh inspiration, uh a lot of advice from the students and the staff.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that's uh my own staff in the kitchen or the teachers, um we really we really get a lot of good advice and expertise from the community, really.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you a little example of that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um both you and I were at the um uh family night for uh Afghani students at at Mountain View, and uh we were in the kitchen um working on making uh Afghani food, and it was uh going okay, but not the best.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we had a couple students uh who were there uh prepping, helping for the evening, and they uh jumped right in and basically showed us how grandma made uh these recipes.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it turned out wonderful.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: We figured out how to do it, we you know, we got the technique down, um, but it was really cool to like have them come in, show us how to do that, and now we can replicate it in the future.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was so cool.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And delicious.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the final product was great.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get to see the experiments and the the first phase, but man, uh what you you served was great and food that I hadn't had before.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh sometimes we talk about oh, we need to uh have culturally responsive food, but we're also expanding everybody's horizon, uh, myself included.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: My overarching goal for the district is that we're a great district for all students and families, and to do that in the child nutrition area and to do that with the content of our lunches is fabulous and and right on point.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about a really innovative program that I know Auburn School District has.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're not the only district, but I'm really proud of what we're doing with locally sourced foods.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know we have some some support from the state to do that, uh, but people would be blown away.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, literally, I hope we have a chance to share some of the pictures of the produce and other uh foods that are grown in area farms.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just spectacular.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh talk about something that that they didn't have when I was in school, the really good stuff.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us about that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So this is um something the nutrition department here in Auburn really believes in.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um we we really value um both good quality food but also supporting the community.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And one way to do that is buying food from your local community.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So uh during the last school year we purchased food from uh just about 60, that's 6-0, uh small farms uh within Washington State.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And most of those within about a hundred miles of where we are uh right now.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um for instance, we uh work with a really uh cool uh farm down in Tacoma called De La Mesa Farm.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they grow the the best looking uh salad greens uh for us, and we have those in about five, maybe six of our schools, mostly on the South.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: End.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the beauty of that is that um the salad lasts well over a week.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you take it out of the f refrigerator a week later, still looks perfect, crisp, colorful, just beautiful.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um compared to salad we get from uh uh producers or growers not in Washington State, and that there are times where we're we're picking brown and red uh not good looking lettuce leaves, you know, we're we're picking half the bag and throwing that away.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um we've we've really worked hard at getting this better quality, uh better tasting uh food on our school menus.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well uh you could pay a lot of money for some of this food at a restaurant, and I was surprised the last time I had school lunch to learn it's not just the produce, but uh I think I had a burrito that had a uh tortilla that was I don't know if this if we would call it we'd probably call it locally sourced.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't maybe farmed as school, uh, but it was delicious.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could literally taste the difference between that and uh what I might have at home that we just uh got at the grocery store from a from a large supplier.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I hope we can do more of uh the the farm to school local sourced food in the future.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: We were lucky enough to be visited by the United States Deputy Under Secretary from USDA, um, and this is basically somebody from uh the upper levels of the federal government who has direct responsibility over school lunch programs, and she came to to Auburn.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why did they come to Auburn School District?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: They could have gone, you know, to to many other districts.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why'd they come here what they want to see?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: We we've really um taken the ball and run with this farm to school program, but the kitchen managers do have the freedom um to buy things specific for their school.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: We have um a wonderful kitchen manager up at Hazelwood Elementary.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh her name's Lisa, and she I don't know why Lisa's into mushrooms, but she is.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we I'll often walk into that kitchen and I'm like, what?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lisa, what is this?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: This looks like a like a cowbrain or something like that, but it's this like, you know, locally grown mushroom, and it's like blue and orange or something.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I was talking to her earlier this school year.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's been uh bringing these mushrooms in just about every week for about a year.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, you know, um we I used to have to hide them in things, you know, I'd put them like in pasta and kind of cook them, you know, put them in some cover them with cheese, whatever.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: But now the kids love these mushrooms.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can just put them on a pan, roast them with a little bit of salt, and the kids will eat a whole pan of mushrooms, like no problem.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the uh again, that the kitchen managers are are making the magic happen and really um uh doing some of this beautiful work with the farm to school program uh on their own.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite part of these interviews is when we go off of the prep sheet.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we did not have mushrooms on the sheet, and now we know about uh Lisa and Hazelwood and uh some delicious mushrooms on the menu.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's have some fun here.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what is the most popular item on our menus?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I I gotta break it up by grade level.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um at the elementary school, uh, I think nachos and the spicy chicken burgers really fly out of the kitchen.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've got uh down at Riverside High School, um Helena, the kitchen manager there, always has some really good roasted vegetables.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she'll do multiple pans of that every day.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um up at Auburn High School, uh Lori the kitchen manager there, uh the kids really enjoy the wings.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um at Mountain View High School, um the kids really seem to love anything uh that is broadly Asian and with some sauce on it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: It could be orange chicken, Sichuan chicken, teriyaki chicken, uh we've got a Hawaiian chicken that we were trying out last week.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, it's fun to see.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: So another fun thing that I'm wondering, and I'm sure some of our listeners are wondering, uh can you give us some idea how much food is required to provide lunch and breakfast for 24 different schools?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: When we buy food, uh when I make the menus and figure out what food we need to buy and what ingredients we need to buy to uh make those menus happen, it's it's a lot of food.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um as we were talking earlier, this is like 11,000 lunches a day, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: So to give you an example, when I put um just something simple like apples on the menu, I mean it is half of a semi-truck full of apples for that day.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's crazy.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So but but the but that I thought my Costco shopping cart was big.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually, you know, I think the first year that we came back from the pandemic, we were still having issues getting uh food from some of our the people the companies we buy food from.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of Costco, I went to Costco to try and buy food for one elementary school, and I wiped out all of their apples, all of their bananas.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had multiple carts.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was wild.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's it's a lot of food just for one school.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can't go to Costco.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: We we learned that today.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go to Costco to get the kind of qualities you need to feed a school.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Ben, what was your favorite thing to do at recess?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite thing to do at recess, and this was at Blakely Elementary on Bainbridge Island.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um they had this kind of like sloping hill that went from like the upper playground to the lower playground.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody had the idea to plant a bunch of uh like buried tractor tires in there, so they were kind of like half in the ground, half out of the ground.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure it was uh my friend Dave Chu or maybe Neil Harris, they were always kind of the trendsetters at this.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: But we get a group of boys and girls at the top of that hill and sprint down it and leap onto those tires and fly.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like 30 feet in the air, like down this hill.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Dave Chu like sprained his back one day, like flying through the air, like it was just this wild thing that was it was fun, it was so fun.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting exercise and fresh air, and it was beautiful.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And now the insurance company won't let us do those fun things at recess anymore.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: But shout out to Dave Chu anyway.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my guest has been Ben Atkinson, our assistant director of Child Nutrition.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Ben and the whole team over there, uh Jan and Mike and everybody do a phenomenal job uh feeding our students, uh feeding anybody who needs it uh in our school settings, breakfast, lunch, uh we learned two two high schools are now doing dinner for kids who are involved after school.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's it's just phenomenal.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the growth that we've seen in the quality of the food, the uh the amount of produce, the locally sourced produce, um, and and the culture responsive foods has been really tremendous, and I look forward to seeing where it's going.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is a creative group, they're hands-on the care, uh and they're really trying to make this the best child nutrition experience for the students of the Auburn School District.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ben, thank you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this has been the Recess Podcast.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being with us today.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed what you heard, uh please share it with your friends and uh do all those things you do on social media so that we spread the word and we can share the stories about the Auburn School District and the people and programs that make this an amazing place to be.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And most of all, thank you to you for listening.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: This has been the Recess Podcast.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you next time.