Showtime: the art of school food excellence with Michael Rosenberger

00:00:05 Michelle

Welcome to the Farm to School Podcast, where you'll hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in schools…

00:00:16 Rick

Across the country…

00:00:18 Michael Rosenberger

And in Rochester, New York.

00:00:22 Rick

No, that was last episode. We're in we're in Jefferson. Can you say Jefferson, Oregon?

00:00:27 Michael Rosenberger

Oh, yeah.

00:00:29 Michelle

Oh, my word.

00:00:31 Rick

Say it, go ahead.

00:00:32 Michael Rosenberger

And in Jefferson, Oregon.

00:00:36 Michelle

It’s perfect. All right, everyone. Thank you very special guest. I want to say co-host, but actually this is someone we're interviewing today. So I'm Michelle Markesteyn from Oregon State University and we have…

00:00:46 Rick

I'm Rick Sherman.

00:00:47 Michelle

And our very special in studio guest is.

00:00:50 Michael Rosenberger

Michael Rosenberger.

00:00:52 Michelle

All the way from Dallas sort of area, Texas.

00:00:56 Rick

Dallas, Texas. And we were talking. You go ahead. You were..

00:01:00 Michelle

He's being polite. We were always talking, but I really want to… I want to say what this episode is and what I asked for is because I'm constantly in awe of Rick and Michael, because few people have as much experience as they do related to nutrition services and excellence. I know they're both dedicated to excellence in different ways throughout their entire personal and professional lives.

00:01:26 Rick

And the reason when we were talking about this, when in our lives as nutrition service directors, it seems like food service gets a wrap. Like, okay, you're just there to provide food, you know, and like, but they want to talk about, graduation rates and increasing student excellence and stuff. And it's like, well, we want the teachers to be involved in that. So it's always like, we try to figure out how we can be a better partner in that. And I was telling the story earlier when we were just chatting that I used to speak at our local school board association convention in Portland, Oregon every year. And I used to talk about farm to school and I would talk about, farm to school and they would, increasing fruits and veggies and it was nutrition and I'd get like 6 people in that room. But once I started figuring out, started leaning into the goals of the school boards and the principals and say how to increase graduation rates and attendance and decrease student discipline issues. by farm to school, I would get lines out the door. I would be, there would be packed rooms and I'd have to get bigger rooms to do that. So that's how I figured out how in farm to school, like that's how you can, that's how you make the difference. And so we were talking with Michael and I'm going to kick it over to you about being a partner for that. How did you solve that issue?

00:02:58 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, well, the biggest issue.. The biggest point is to realize in school food service, you are part of a larger institution, and that's called the school district, and that's called education. And the pathway to success in school food service, the more that you can help your school district or parish or county schools, whatever, accomplish their goals, the more successful you will become. And so what are those goals? We want to graduate students and we want them to be prepared to be the best person that they can be post-graduation. And so what does that mean for school food service? Well, it means serving meals that boost student achievement, that help drive positive student enrollment, timeliness, show up to school every day, start their day with a healthy breakfast, and be prepared to learn. Because what we know, and the science is quite clear on this, if you take two groups of students, one started their day with a healthy breakfast, and one did not have breakfast, we automatically know they have different starting points in their day.

00:04:15 Rick

And for all the parents out there that are sending their kids off to school, why is breakfast such a challenge at school districts?

00:04:24 Michael Rosenberger

Well, there's a lot of reasons why breakfast is a challenge. You have a lot of students who

00:04:33 Michael Rosenberger

They're time starved. They're trying to get to class. Maybe they're late being dropped off to school, either by bus or by parents or friends or whatnot. And so there can be a timeliness issue.

00:04:46 Rick

Sometimes the doors don't even open like at 8 o'clock and class starts at 8.05 or something.

00:04:51 Michael Rosenberger

That's right. And there's no time for breakfast. And, you know,

00:05:00 Rick

It's breakfast in the classroom. That's a program. Sometimes they feed the students there. There's creative ways to do that, right?

00:05:06 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, there's breakfast in the classroom. There's second chance breakfast where you would open later for breakfast. You can do a variety of breakfast options where maybe you do a hot breakfast. Like one of our favorite breakfasts back when I was a director was build your own breakfast. So it might be a breakfast sandwich or a breakfast croissant, and you could choose what you want in they have on that. So it's custom made. And then maybe you have some carts that you wheel around the school to the high traffic areas, like where buses drop off students or the front entrance, and you have a grab and go breakfast for those students. And so there, and then breakfast after the bell. I mean, look, when a student is late, 99% of students are not intending to be late. Something went wrong in their day. They're late. And they may be hungry. And the worst thing that can happen to that student is they're already late. They're gonna have repercussions for being late. And then they get denied a breakfast on top of that. I mean, it's piling on.

00:06:14 Rick

They have nothing in the tank to learn on. That's huge. Hey, one of the things, Michael, that I get all the time from parents, you know, in my life, and they talk about breakfast, like, they complain about the breakfast options, that they're highly processed cereals or French toast sticks or something like that. I wanted to be clear, they meet the USDA regulations, but that's not always the healthiest choice. And it's hard to get farm to school options in breakfast, but what were some of the things you did in your experience with breakfast? You were telling me earlier with proteins and things like that. You were telling me…

00:06:54 Michael Rosenberger

Brain food, Brain food.

00:06:57 Rick

Okay.

00:06:58 Michael Rosenberger

And you can make a conscious effort as a food service director to put more quote unquote brain food on your menu. What is that?

00:07:06 Rick

What is that?

00:07:07 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, brain foods tend to be fresh fruits and veggies, which falls beautifully into farm to school. Oregon blueberries, bring them up. They are amazing. And then proteins are a really good source. Again, fruits and veggies, leafy greens. You may not have so much at breakfast, but you can do berries and you can do a variety of vegetables are really amazing brain food. And so you can structure your menus where you still meet the required federal guidelines, but they're also, it's kind of self-health. It's something extra good for you. And it is a building block to student achievement.

00:07:53 Michelle

So you guys are doing exactly what I was hoping when we would all get together. And you're already getting into the details of like how these different programs are run. But I'm thinking of like, as relates to farm to school, that, you know, as a farm to school advocate and scholar and innovator, right, we're constantly asking nutrition service directors, you guys, buy more local foods. do more local things. basically my goals, right? Or as an outside person, outside of schools, I want you to accomplish my goals, which are whatever's from my agency that I'm working for, whatever is the nonprofit mission, whatever funding I was able to get, and whatever that philanthropic organization's goals are. So I'm just thinking like, When someone comes to you, I've heard this said lovingly in the nutrition director circles, are frenemies, like people who are advocates for nutrition services and child nutrition, and yet may not actually help school districts. And so from your perspective, like, you know, like farm to schools is like an add-on. Am I saying this right? That before you can even do those special things like farm to school, don't you in a position of a nutrition service director have to meet the goals of your current job description and responsibilities? Right? Like you have your own, you're talking about breakfast in the classroom and academics, but like, what are the goals that you're responsible for?

00:09:28 Rick

Yeah, the bottom line for sure, you had to break even.

00:09:31 Michelle

Okay.

00:09:32 Rick

at least there's that.

00:09:34 Michael Rosenberger

Yes.

00:09:34 Rick

But, and you're right. As far as I did, we had those goals and I would try to meld my goals of local into that and knock off two birds with one stone, so to speak, and be innovative with programs and be part of student achievement. One thing, one thing I did, you know, yeah, we broke even, but in like our secondary schools, our high schools and such, you had to have a good lunch program anyway and it had to be like a food court. You had to be able to compete because we had open campuses and everyone went down to the road and there was so much available down the road and we had to keep them in, right? So it was open campus. So what we would do is like I would partner with our culinary department in a couple of school districts and I would say, hey, how about I have one of a block and I have one of your kids for three periods and I'll help grade them, pass, fail or whatever. And I'd give them one of my sections of line and they would do, they would learn, they would teach, everyone would come eat because it was their buddies making the food. They'd be in a chef coat. And then I was part of the education process and I could go to the school boards and tout what a good job we were doing. So you had to be creative to think of that. Yeah, you still had to focus on the bottom line too, but I don't know. What are your thoughts, Michael?

00:10:55 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, there are responsibilities that you have as a food service director that are just core and base. And Rick, you hit on one of them. depending on the size of your district and maybe some unique things happening in your school district, well, as a director, you're expected to run at least a break-even program. Because if the district has to support you, every dollar that goes toward you potentially is $1 less to go to the classroom or to counselors or whatever else the district may be spending funds on. And you have to run a department that adheres to your district's policies, your state policies, and federal policies. And so you have to check all those. So you have to have a solid foundation for your program, right? And you're expected as a director, that's just kind of, this is what we expect from you. But circling back to farm to school, look, we all food service directors all buy tons of produce. And right now, the federal guidelines are a student has to take a serving of fruit or veg with every meal that they have. And so as a director, you have some flexibility in what are those fruits and veggies and where are you going to source them from? The interesting thing is school food service departments are kind of the last national mom and pop business. And what I mean by that is that every department is a reflection of what that director holds to be valuable and holds to be important. Okay. And so let's say on the scale of, on the dimension of innovation, you have a standard distribution. You have some on the one side who are, really pushing the envelope and doing new and exciting things all the time. Well, that's a reflection of that director and their personality and what they hold to be valuable. You have the great mass in the middle that, yeah, you know, we'll try some new things, but we're going to stay the course on some things. And then you have some on the other end that, hey, the job honestly is a lot easier if you don't change much. It's not as fun. It's not as exciting. It's not as able to make a positive difference for students, for employees, for the community. But it is the last mom and pop business in America. So you look at a department. Now, having said that, every director has constraints. They may have their own personal constraints. They may be constrained by their district, by their boss, by their administration. The state may have regulations that either increase the odds that certain things are going to happen or decrease the odds that things are going to happen. And then certainly on the federal side, there's a box that you have to keep your program within, let's say like nutrition guidelines. But there's still a lot of room within that box to be innovative, to push the envelope, and to deliver excellence day in and day out for your employees, for your community, and especially for the students that you serve.

00:14:45 Rick

Yeah, I think in nuggets of what you said, I mean, it is so important for a food service director, not just to punch the clock and do the job, but be in sync with those goals and to try to do that. And if you don't have a goal of farm to school and local, which a lot of food service directors don't, here, even in our neck of the woods, which I find mystifying. It's just the way I'm wired, but not everyone's wired like me. I get that. But if I got a call from a board member, which they would call me once in a while, and if they said, hey, how much local are we buying? Or hey, are we, I would, would I perk up right away and say, oh, yes, or yes, ma'am, whatever. And it would become instantly more of a goal to me if that happened. So I always encourage people like, not as a passive aggressive thing, but continue, please everybody, attend board meetings, be informed. You can always get your one minute or two minutes to talk about how important these issues are to you. And the more you say it, then it becomes an issue that's important to the school board and in turn gets to be important by the food service department, I think, school boards.

00:16:03 Michelle

Back to your point though, like if you want to talk to the school board about it being important to you,

00:16:08 Michelle

consider using their metrics of success. So does participation or attendance improve when it's like a school garden day? Which studies have shown that?

00:16:20 Rick

Yep.

00:16:20 Michael Rosenberger

Yes.

00:16:21 Michelle

Do more kids eat meals when it's pizza served? Yes. People are nodding their heads. You can't see it in the podcast.

00:16:29 Michael Rosenberger

Yes. Pizza is always popular. Always. And it's good. And there are healthier types of pizza that you can serve. You can make them homemade yourself or kind of a speed scratch, pizza. it's fantastic. And having a really popular entree like that can be a on road for students to try new foods because you serve this amazing fresh tossed salad alongside, and it has some maybe local ingredients, maybe all of the salad features local. However, your school district or school authority may define local. And so you take something that is like a super high participation, and it's an on road for students to try new foods and to push fresh, local, healthy, amazing products day in and day out for our students.

00:17:28 Michelle

Actually, oh. We're like trying to talk over each other. I know there's so many ideas.

00:17:32 Rick

You go first.

00:17:33 Michelle

Okay, we'll have to say this. So before we had farm to school legislation in Oregon, that's how we started farm to school. So, you know, we met with schools as a benevolent broker and said, and we came up with this idea that like, well, the most kids possible, it was like an access and equity consideration, should get Oregon foods. And so we looked at the two most popular things, which were burritos and pizza. And then we literally drove around and met with the people who make the pizza and the burritos and tried to source ingredients. And so more and more of the ingredients on the pizza and from the pizza, like you're talking about the salad on the side, which is definitely another approach, but we were like, so anyway, it was really interesting because so much has changed in, values and values change over time. And that was 20 years ago. And now we're like really questioning.

00:18:24 Rick

Are we that old?

00:18:25 Michelle

You are. I don't know. I keep hearing about his bum hip. I don't know what to say. Yeah.

00:18:32 Michael Rosenberger

It matters to students where their food comes from. And so if you can share that your toppings for the pizza or your side salad or whatnot comes from your state, from farmers or ranchers or agriculture in your state, that is huge. You know, one thing I noticed, so I was in school food service for 30 years. Our students right now are the most sophisticated customers that school food service has ever had. back in the stone age when I was in school, we would maybe, it was like Sunday, it was a big deal to go to a restaurant and eat. It was like once a week we would go. And now students eat out multiple times. They know good food, they know good service. We have the most demanding customers that we have ever had in school food service. And to me, that is a plus. That is so motivating because it's like, all right, school food service, we got to raise our standards. We got to meet and exceed customer expectations, both students and teachers and community members. So having very highly educated customers, I think is one of the best things that can happen for school food service, because these kids, they care where does the food come from and what nationality or what part of the world is this food inspired by? And what am I going to experience by having this? So it's a very exciting time to be in school food service and to be pushing. fresh, local, amazing products day in and day out, because ultimately, our staff benefits, our community benefits, our state benefits, and most of all, the students benefit.

00:20:32 Rick

Vendors. I want to zero in on something you said. You said share like what you're doing locally. The students you said care about where their food comes from. Now, and Michelle and I have talked about this quite a bit, unlike I've got a talking to before when I said this, and I'm kind of, I get on my soapbox and sometimes I say, don't even bother doing farm to school unless you're, unless you tell your story, unless you, if you don't tell your story, then it's kind of pointless if you're putting out this local food and the kids don't know about it. And I've also heard, like we said this on a previous podcast, and someone said, yeah, well, my kids notice the fresher food, and that may or may not be true, but we always say, if you teach them about where their food comes from, they like, if it's a school garden day and they're some of their produce or whatever, or this is Joe's farm down the street, then that's the secret sauce. You're really, we've seen it time and time again where the kids really zero in on that and get that. But I imagine it's really difficult for a school. How many schools did you have in Dallas area?

00:21:44 Michael Rosenberger

About 230.

00:21:46 Rick

So to do the marketing for that and like, and if you had local whatever, it probably might not get to all 230, but some of the schools, so you had to make sure the marketing, the point of sale stuff got to those right schools. That must have been, well, you had a team of people, I'm sure, but what were some of those challenges?

00:22:05 Michael Rosenberger

Look, okay, first of all, if you don't tell your own story, somebody else is going to fill in the gaps.

00:22:11 Rick

Thank you.

00:22:12 Michael Rosenberger

And the chance is that they're going to fill in the gaps in a negative sense, because maybe that's human nature or maybe something else. But so it's really important to get in front and tell your story. One of the school districts I worked at, we had a program called Harvest of the Month. And so it was a unique item that was fresh, local, grown in the state. And so we would serve this product throughout the month in a number of different ways, if possible. If it was sweet potatoes, let's say one week, they might be baked whole sweet potatoes, and the next week, maybe they're mashed sweet potatoes, et cetera, et cetera. And we would always have a little QR code and information about this came from so-and-so farm in our state. And you could go to the QR code, you could read the little information about it and really find out about the farmers. I remember one time, so for Halloween, We had a thing called a blood orange. And yeah, you've seen them.And the juice is kind of a reddish, right? And so it's a great thing to have for October, for Halloween.

00:23:30 Rick

They don't grow up here too well in the Pacific Northwest. No.

00:23:33 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, they're not native to everywhere. But the cool thing was we actually invited one of the farmers that we got the oranges from and the farmer came to a preschool that we had and brought a couple of branches with the oranges still on the branches and brought oranges to share for the entire class. We filmed the entire presentation and really shared with the wider community that, you know, what we're serving is farm fresh, hand-picked at the peak of freshness to students who may not otherwise ever get to experience that. Now, the, one challenge, Rick, is a lot of times in school food service, the director doesn't necessarily think that what they're doing is newsworthy. I can see that. There's a lot of, well, this is just what we do, right? But, why do I want to talk about it?

00:24:41 Rick

Again, if that's what we do, and if you don't say it, like you saying, like someone else will fill in the blank for you, because the the knock you get is, oh, school food. it's like there's these negative connotations, which, and if I had people coming in and having the meals with their kids, like I would encourage, they would sure see, oh, wow, school food has come a long way, you know?

00:25:08 Michael Rosenberger

Yes, yeah, totally, 100%. And so I think it's very important For food service directors, look, Rick, food service directors wear many, many hats. It's a very complex job. But one hat that I think is really, it's a best practice, it's a great thing for directors is to get some education, some experience in communication skills, in presentation, in marketing, in getting your message and sharing it with the wider community and let people know, it's funny. So we, as humans, we see the world through our experiences, right? And through the life that we've lived. And so back in the stone ages, when I was in school, well, I remember what school food was like then. But because I spent a career in school food service, I've seen it evolve. I've seen chefs come into schools, and I've seen some food that is absolutely amazing. But a lot of the community, when they think of school food, they think back to when they were in school and they judge current school food through that lens. Now, this is natural. This is just human nature. We all see the world through the lens of our life and in experience. So it's even more important for food service directors to share the news of all the positives that are happening in the department. that, again, go to that foundation. Why are we doing what we're doing? Why are we serving farm fresh at the peak of quality in nutrition and taste? Why are we doing that? Because we're supporting the educational mission of the school district so that we can boost student achievement and so we can graduate students who are going to be in a position to become the best them that they can become.

00:27:26 Rick

Yeah.

00:27:27 Michelle

So let's operationalize that. How would you actually do that? Because it sounds like, yeah, that's what we're trying to do. And I know, you know, we in Oregon try to do some of that with getting folks on our local morning talk show, getting nutrition service directors, talking and sharing their stories, sharing grantee stories from farm to school grantees from the Department of Education. But like, I'm just curious what you both think is even possible. What would this look like?

00:27:55 Rick

I have some thoughts.

We just had our local state conference this last weekend and Michelle knows this, but we were the first state in Oregon to map all of our school gardens. I called every school in the state. It took 20 minutes a day for about 3 months. My first three months on the job, I went from Amity to Yoncala, Oregon, and I'd call the main line and say, do you have a school garden? And they're like, well, we have Rhodies out front. No, do you have carrots in the ground? Yes or no? So we did that. And we went back and surveyed all these people. And one of the questions we had was, do you have a paid school garden position? And back then in 2009, I don't know, 10, 11, it was like there was this little sliver. It was like less than 10% where people would either be a full-time farm to school person or part-time. They would have a couple classes where they would teach school gardening or most were volunteers. more and more, the last time we interviewed everybody, it was about 50% of some sort of in-kind, or they had a couple classes, or there was a paid school garden position. Well, this last weekend when we were at, when I was at the conference, we were looking around the room and found all these people. There was like Klamath Falls, Redmond School District, there's a couple more that are, my names are escaping me, but they had full-time farm to school people in nutrition services working. They had these paid positions. And I was asking how they did it. I was like, well, they're one of the lucky ones. They manage their books, so they had a little surplus. And so they were able to fund that through their nutrition services department. And these people are doing educational programming. They're sourcing food locally. They're doing all these things. So the food service director takes a little pressure off them. But amazing. We've had, there was a bunch at our conference that were presenting. It was awesome.

00:29:58 Michelle

Well, and actually, according to the 2023 USDA Farm to School Census, right, which is like our best data set we have available to us, 78% of child nutrition programs in Oregon have at least one full or part-time staff person working on Farm to School efforts. Wow, that's amazing. So that was your response to my question, which was, how do we actually do the marketing communications? So are you suggesting that it's that person, that it's out, like, It can be. Who gets the professional development? Because that's this topic today is professional development and excellence. Who needs to know media and communications?

00:30:40 Rick

Let me give you a couple more, another little couple things, and I'll throw it over to Michael. But I talked to a person, Heather Beuley, from Cottage Grove, Oregon. Hey, Heather, if you're listening. But she was like part of a nonprofit state extension, Oregon State University Extension, and she's working with a couple tiny school districts where the food service director may or may not be overwhelmed. But that person, I'm like, I was telling her, I'm like, if I was a food service director and I had somebody there to do the lifting for me, in that case, or when I was in Eugene, we had the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition that was a non-profit. They did all of my marketing for me. They did sourcing for me. So sometimes there's a non-profit if you can't afford to do that. It's not going to be everywhere, but there might be someone that can give you help in your local extension. They're just, they have farm to school in their job description, I guess, whatever.

00:31:41 Michelle

You're kind of blowing my mind because, well, just, you know, being in extension, right? That's my job to like figure out how we embed farm to school across colleges and like extension programming. And at the time of this recording, the federal funding for SNAP education was cut. And as a result, in Oregon, it's like 100 staff people like Heather, who no longer work in farm to school and school gardens. But it occurs to me, because the question on the table is, who gets trained up for media and communications to tell these stories? And I guess I'm just realizing maybe there's more partnership development that we hadn't considered around extension and around other community partners.

00:32:31 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, that's a big question. And so there are elements of answers to that question.

One is certainly the food service director. Another is the district communications office, because most districts will have a communications director or office. And one of the best friends as a director that you can make is with your communications people so that you can, look, part of being a director is networking within your district and building those partnerships, building those relationships. But also, Michelle, and you mentioned this, I mean, there are a lot of outside organizations that are doing just amazing work. in advocating for healthier school meals, advocating for farm to school. And so the potential for partnerships is incredible. So I think you're exploring that. And then, Michelle, you also mentioned professional development and training. And I've always been a big believer in professional development and training. You have to invest in your people. The more you invest in your people, the better that they're going to do. Now, it's interesting. I was at a conference not too long ago. And so I'm saying, yeah, you know, I really believe in, man, it's daily. It is a daily thing. You should try to teach your staff something new every single day. And so this one person said, well, what if I train all my people really well, and what if they leave? And I'm like, well, what if you don't train them and they stay?

(MASSIVE LAUGHTER)

00:34:23 Rick

That's great.

00:34:25 Michael Rosenberger

So that's what I've heard in a long time. Listen, my last district, we got poached all the time. We had like super talented people. I mean, just amazing people that we would invest in and then you set them free and see how they can sort of…

00:34:43 Rick

And they become food service directors in other districts. Yeah, you bet.

00:34:47 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, because you know, school districts are bureaucracies and there's only so many openings and I couldn't promote everybody I wanted to promote because there was nowhere within the department for them to go. And so they would go elsewhere. And that's wonderful, push them out of the nest. And it's actually a compliment to the system that people want to poach your people and like hire them away. And it's like, okay, great. So yeah, so that's- You're sad for.

00:35:20 Rick

Losing them, but so happy for their growth.

00:35:23 Michael Rosenberger

Yes. Yeah. And to see them soar and then take off, take a program and take that program, maybe they get there and it's a five and whatever context you want to look at it. And their first year, they make it a six or a seven and their next year and now it's an eight or a nine and it's upward moving. And participation is booming and students are happy and staff is engaged, and so the professional development side is absolutely critical. Training, invest in your people because however long you have them, you want them to be trained. You want them to be experts in their field and then set them free to take their area to that next level.

00:36:11 Rick

What if you don't train them and they stay? That's the best. Well, that could be a book. Like, you know, that would sell a million copies right there as the title of her book.

00:36:21 Michelle

So yeah, in thinking of professional development and as relates to farm to school, like, you know, our state goals include exactly that, like our strategy is to grow, sustain, and support professionals to advance their ability to implement farm to school. So from your perspective, what does nutrition services need? Like what types of professional development would support that?

00:36:51 Michael Rosenberger

Well, that's a good question. Look, what kind of training do people need in general? So you bring people on to your organization. There's an orientation to the basics and then communication skills, leadership skills, you know, foundational elements to give these, to give your people the tools to start taking some steps on their own. And you also have to have a allowance for people to make mistakes. I would always tell my staff, especially new hires, I'm like, look, or I go into a training that we are giving the people. And I'm like, look, I expect you to make mistakes. I want you to make mistakes because it's the only way you're going to learn. And 99.9% of mistakes you could make, they've happened before they're going to happen again. It's okay. My only concern as a director would be if you keep making the same mistake, because then that means that learning is not taking place. So, you know, get out there, make some mistakes, learn from your mistakes, elevate, move on. One of my core precepts is audit ready, competition ready. And what that means is every single day, And this is putting the auditor's hat on, because as a food service director, you're always being audited by somebody. Either your district's internal audit, the external auditor that the district hires, or federal regulators are looking at something in your program. You're always being audited.

00:38:40 Rick

I love the accountability.

00:38:42 Michelle

Well, this is where I want, this is where I expected this conversation to go, right?

00:38:45 Michael Rosenberger

Okay, bring it. So competition ready, audit ready. So every single day, the goal, the vision is an auditor should be able to look at our books, an auditor should be able to walk into any, a health inspector, walk into any kitchen, any day, unannounced, and we're in great shape.

00:39:07 Rick

You know, that's why really we don't have a lot of issues because this is law that we have yearly audits by third party audits that come in and do the books. We have two times every kitchen in Oregon anyway for our food service inspection.

00:39:25 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, health inspection.

00:39:26 Rick

Yeah, and I always liken it to like in a restaurant, it might be a 24-hour like deal where food is always in production. In schools, food is either hot or it's cold and put away within, it's a short amount of time. You can feel really good about your kids eating there. And I've seen the best, cleanest operations in food service or at schools. I really believe that, anyway.

00:39:55 Michael Rosenberger

Yeah, I agree 100%. So when you have that as a foundational piece, we are audit ready, we're competition ready every single day. I use the, back when I was a director, I always used the analogy, the curtain is opening. So imagine you're at a play, at a performance. And a hush fault, they turn the lights down in the auditorium and on stage, the curtain opens and the actors come out, right? So look, we have the same thing in school food service. When those students show up, you have to be ready 5 minutes before competition ready, audit ready, customer ready. You know, that's how, that's, That's the foundation for excellence in a program every single day. It's like, again, I was recently at a conference and we're talking about administrative reviews. Used to be the CRE, coordinator review effort. Now it's in AR. And so a director asked me and the director said, when did you start preparing for your AR?

00:41:10 Rick

We never don't prepare. It's like, it's like, it's an ongoing thing. It's all the time.

00:41:16 Michael Rosenberger

Yes. It's, look, my one word answer, yesterday.

00:41:20 Rick

Yeah.

00:41:21 Michael Rosenberger

You know, because the daily habits that you have, the in and out daily things you do are either going to contribute to your success or they're going to draw you back. And so preparation for an administrative review, it's not a one-time thing. It's not a one-time every three years. It is the things you do daily are going to guide your success.

00:41:46 Rick

And it's not just you, it's a constant training thing. You're training your staff because they're going to go to your, one of your, one of your schools at random and like, let's see your production records, you know, and if they're not perfect, there's troubles, there's problems, you know, you get reimbursements for those meals, you might have to, you might have to get a refund, you know, stuff. Anyway, I go, we can, we can talk about this for forever.

00:42:12 Michelle

And so is there a role for farm to school advocates, farm to school funders in supporting nutrition services in this space where you guys are talking?

00:42:23 Michael Rosenberger

Well, I think 100%. And maybe one of the most important things that farm to school advocates can do is share that there are multiple ways to get farm to school, to get local fresh produce. What do I mean by that? Okay, this is what I mean. In a very, very large urban school district where you have 100,000 or more students, it can be very difficult to contract directly with a farmer. Number one, just because the bureaucracy makes it very challenging. And #2, you have 100,000 or maybe 300,000 students to feed. And how many local farmers can support that? It can be a challenge. And so You can go, one way to get farm to school is go direct to the farmer. Another way, you may have an awarded produce vendor for your department. And you can go to that produce vendor with whom you have a contract, you have a bid, and you can direct that produce supplier and say, I want this produce item, these oranges, these.

00:43:38 Rick

You can specify local now in your bids.

00:43:41 Michael Rosenberger

You sure can. But you can also tell your vendor, I want potatoes grown in this state, and I want to purchase them for the month of November. Then that vendor, who is an awarded vendor, goes out. They work their network. That's their job, is to go out and buy produce and then sell it. So you can actually get your vendors to do the work for you if you encounter challenges contracting directly with a farmer or a rancher or something like that. So you can actually turn your suppliers into your source for local fresh. And so I think there's a huge education piece that it's not a one-way ticket or one way street to get to there. There's a lot of different ways that food service directors can organize their bids and work with their vendors to get local, fresh, peak of quality produce and rancher products into the school district. And so those types of things are the education point

because no food service director is born with this knowledge. It all has to be taught, it has to be learned, it has to be shared.

00:45:09 Rick

Okay, so now you're a food service director driving on your way to the grocery store and you're listening to this and you're feeling overwhelmed, be like, I don't have any of this stuff, or you're a parent wanting to help out or whatever. There's a few things you can do, and we can put these in the show notes, but you can Google like farm to school in Louisiana or wherever state you're in, you know, and you will have options. There might be nonprofits there. There's a national farm to school network. If you just bring up the National Farm to School Network and then click on your state, there are resources there too. Right? Any other options like that? And there are those extensions and stuff, right?

00:45:49 Michelle

Lots of folks in lots of different places. So I keep going dancing around this question and I think we answered it. And the question was, is there a role for farm to school professionals outside of school nutrition services to support nutrition services in your core functions related to audits, being audit ready, maybe media and communications, such that nutrition services can get an A plus in their job and then be more likely to do more farm to school. Do you guys see what I'm saying? Yes. I'm just wondering, like we've never looked at farm to school in that way, and I'm wondering if there is a role to do that.

00:46:31 Rick

I think we just give Michael's contact information and have everyone talk to him. And he could do it for everybody.

00:46:39 Michelle

Yeah, you do it, Michael.

00:46:40 Rick

Consultant there, I just created a new job.

00:46:42 Michelle

There you go. I'm also wondering if, you know, what would it take for a philanthropic organization, so the funders, you know, a lot of times they're like, oh, here's your project, we fund your project, we fund personnel, we fund travel, we fund equipment, we fund supplies. What if part of every grant was also we fund media and communications? We fund marketing, we fund the storytelling of the media.

00:47:09 Rick

Yeah, it's all part of it.

00:47:10 Michelle

Right? I mean, Rick's, the Department of Education in Oregon does that, but we piloted it and that's like a new concept. But I'm like, oh, what would happen if like, you know, every foundation did something like that?

00:47:25 Michael Rosenberger

Telling stories, look, stories are how we learn, and stories are how we frame the world. And so I think to the extent that these partners that you've mentioned, Michelle, can help tell the story of amazingness happening out there. It can help inspire, it can help educate. You know, I always say it's critical. Look, you have to engage the mind and you have to engage the heart. And so when you have, when you tell a story that does both of those, it checks both those boxes, there's no telling the positive that can be accomplished with something like that. So I'm in 110%. Right, cool.

00:48:12 Michelle

And on that note, this is a great time to end this part of our story and turn the page. And so we'd like to thank so many of you for listening today. And thank you, Michael, for joining us. Thank you, Michael.

00:48:23 Michael Rosenberger

Thank you.

00:48:25 Michelle

Farm to School was written, directed, and produced by Rick Sherman. That's him and Michelle Markesteyn, and that's me, with production support from Leanne Lochner and Lauren Toby of Oregon State University.

00:48:37 Rick

That's them.

00:48:38 Michelle

The podcast was made possible in part by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:48:43 Rick

The content and ideas of Farm to School podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:48:56 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about Farm to School?

00:49:00 Michael Rosenberger

Yes.

00:49:01 Michelle

Then call Michael. No, I'm just kidding. Check out our other episode show notes and contact information. Just Google up Farm to School Podcast. You will find us at Oregon State University Extension.

00:49:12 Rick

We would love to hear from you. I keep saying stop by the website and say hello and give us an idea for a future podcast. You can even contact us. There's like a little button. It took me forever to figure out. Yeah, there's buttons.

00:49:22 Rick

There's buttons.

00:49:22 Michelle

Just push those buttons.

00:49:23 Rick

All right.

00:49:24 Michelle

Ciao.

00:49:24 Rick

See you guys.

00:49:25 Michelle

Thanks, Michael, for joining us.