Page 36 - Hillview_book

SCHOOL GARDENS
REAPING BENEFITS BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Garden party at State Road Elementary School in La Crosse with Miss Seven Rivers 2013, Jenna Mills.
In the La Crosse School District, Summit En- vironmental School students harvest produce from their garden. At State Road Elemen-
tary and Hamilton SOTA I Elementary schools, Grow Your Brain, a local non-profit organization promoting nutrition education, works with the schools to increase healthy eating for children through garden programming and integrating the garden into the curriculum, healthy snacks,
the cafeteria and outdoor activity. (For more information on Grow Your Brain, go to www. growyourbrainlax.org.)
In Holmen, all four elementary schools, the middle school and the high school have outdoor gardens. The gardens are learning laboratories that produce healthy food that is served in the student lunchrooms. Students take ownership
and will more likely make better food choices. At the high school, salad bar lettuce comes from a hydroponic lettuce garden housed in the school greenhouse and maintained by agriculture stu- dents. In off-campus gardens FFA (Future Farm- ers of America) students plant and grow enough sweet corn to feed all the students in the district. A national Seeds of Change grant has enabled the district to expand its gardening to raising chickens that will be processed and served in the district’s cafeterias.
The West Salem School District also offers students healthier lunch options including a garden bar, which has a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of which come from the school garden. These efforts started in 2011 when West Salem Elementary School won the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture’s HealthierUS School Chal- lenge Gold Award of Distinction—the only school in Wisconsin to win this award. The district has a greenhouse in which students start plantings that are then used in a West Salem community garden and in the elementary school garden. The Farm2 School grant has allowed the district to purchase produce and beef from local farms.
Other area schools incorporate gardening and healthy eating into their programs, including Cathedral Elementary, in the Aquinas Catholic Schools system, where students tend a raised-bed garden and involve parent volunteers.
Some La Crosse schools, including Coulee Mon- tessori and La Crosse Design Institute, take their students to community gardens such as Washburn Community Garden to give their students hands- on gardening experience. For the past four years in the spring and fall, Longfellow Middle School students have helped out at the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) Villa garden on St. Joseph Ridge.
THE LA CROSSE AREA’S GROWING EXPERIENCE past | present | future
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