Mary Byrne
In the cafeteria of Chenery Upper Elementary School, students—called trash bashers—help their peers navigate the differences between composting, recycling, and trash.
In the kitchens of all seven schools, investments in new equipment are shifting from gas to electric. Food is primarily locally sourced, and kitchen staff at the Chenery and Belmont Middle and High School will soon begin to compost food scraps.
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It is a district-wide drive to make the school kitchens more environmentally friendly.
“I compost at home,” said Food Service Director Jackie Morgan. “It’s amazing how much waste or discard there is when you [prepare] cauliflower. We’re going to try it in two big kitchens and see how it works. The barrel is coming next week. … I think my staff are going to be shocked to see how much goes into composting.”
Though she doesn’t take credit for all of it, Morgan has focused on environmental sustainability in the three years she has worked for the Belmont Public Schools.
“The school nutrition program is always trying to invest in itself,” she said. “To give equipment to our team members so they can make the best meal they can for the students is really our focus.”
The school’s food department is self-sustaining and separate from the school budget. The money students put into it through school meals is the money the food department has to spend.
She said the shift from gas to electric began at Butler Elementary School, where staff had no way to steam vegetables and a gas oven that was becoming too costly to repair.
“That was our first investment,” she said. “We removed all the gas equipment and replaced it with electric [equipment]. The Butler was a little bit of an older school.”
According to Morgan, the new Belmont Middle and High School [which share a kitchen], Chenery, and Wellington all have primarily electric kitchen appliances.
Burbank Elementary School and Winn Brook Elementary School are next on the list of schools whose kitchens will transition from gas to electric.
“Instead of replacing gas with gas, we’re going from gas to electric, which is better for the environment and better for the staff, and safer,” she said.
Beyond infrastructure, Morgan aims to provide students with fresh, locally sourced fish and produce. By partnering with Worcester Food Hub, Belmont gains access to a wide range of products from farms throughout the state.
“It’s less carbon footprint if you’re buying your vegetables from Lunenburg and not Washington state,” she said.
As a result, students are also exposed to a wider variety of foods, from beet noodle salads and kale chips to cinnamon squash.
“The kids were loving it,” she said, referring to the cinnamon squash introduced to the menu last year. “We’re trying food fun and exposing students to new things … and it’s exciting when they do [love it].”
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