Hi Everyone! Welcome to the Call. We will use this chat box for part of our discussion today. Please introduce yourself with your name, school district/agency name, and share one reason you’re passionate about school food!

Hi - I’m Miguel! How are you?

Great idea. Who is speaking?

Hi Everyone! Welcome to the Call. We will use this chat box for part of our discussion today. Please introduce yourself with your name, school district/agency name, and share one reason you’re passionate about school food!

Rosa Rubio, Calistoga Joint Unified School District, I am passionate about school food and food in general because its a great unifier. It doesn't matter who you are, everyone has to eat!!!

Hi All - I’m Mary Ruiz from SRVUSD. I’m passionate about seeing kids smile!

HI everyone! Stephanie Bruce, Palm Springs USD. I am passionate about the people that make up this amazing industry

Good morning all, I am Margaret Ameel, Director HR/Special Projects at Chawanakee Unified. Ensuring our student’s basic needs are met is crucial to their wellbeing.

Hello. Alma McKenry. Fresno County Superintendent of Schools, Health Services Director. I am passionate about making sure our kids have access to nutritious foods.

Yousef Buzayan, Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), School food gets food to children that are in need

Hi! I'm Nick Anicich, the Farm to School Program Lead with the CA Department of Food and Agriculture. I'm passionate about school food because it's an act of love and care for the students and communities we work with.

Hello, This is Jennifer Mattocks with Palm Springs Unified School District

HI Rosa! I just sold my sisters house in Calistoga. It was my sanctuary. I miss it and Calistoga tremendously

Miguel Villarreal from San Ramon Valley USD. Glad to be here with all of you. Stay safe!!

Hi Leyla I don’t know if it’s just me but I’m not able to hear you

Morning everyone, Leslie Pring, Twin Rivers USD. I am grateful for this community of food professionals!

Hello everyone! I work with the Farm to Institution Center at Community Health Improvement Partners. I'm passionate about school food because I love providing opportunities for all kids to eat great food!

Good morning! Barbara Hughes from County of SD HHSA. As a registered dietitian, being passionate about food goes without saying. ;)

HI All, Kristin Zellhart from Eat REAL Certified. Thank you for your service to your communities!

Hello! This is Janelle Manzano I am the Farm to School Specialist for San Diego Unified. I love seeing kids trying new foods!

Stephanie, Calistoga is a amazing, such a connected community.

Hi All. Terra Carlson with the Solana Beach School District. Passionate about food and kids :)

Vince with Natomas USD in Sacramento CA

Holly Hungerford Cocking, Director of Nutrition Services for Springs Charters Schools in Southern California. :)

Debbie Friedman with Food | Climate | Strategies. Passionate about school food because of the importance to kids, human and ecosystem health, farming and rural communities and workers. All the systems and people that it touches.

Michelle Oppen from Oakland Unified. Thank you for organizing!

Thank you for joining us :)

Hi Everyone - This is Jen! I am the Founder of LunchAssist and super happy to be here with you today!

Hey Everyone - Messa here with the Chef Ann Foundation

My favorite thing about school food is all the creativity everyone brings to the table!

Good morning! Kris Vander Weele, Account Specialist at San Luis Coastal Unified School District.

Hello! This is Megan Flynn from the Life Time Foundation. Thank you for this webinar!

Morning! Elizabeth Vaughan here from Friends of the Earth.

Have you or your district submitted a request for public assistance?

any conversation about matching commodity entitlement for SFSP to equal NSLP??

Steph - nothing official but lots of requests on the national level

CSPI has a good letter on this I can send out

the fema closes tomorrow, correct?

I would love to see it Jenn. thank you!

yes

My district applied for FEMA and received funds.

CDE is advertising it closes tomorrow but we don’t think that is accurate based on what is on the California OES website. Better to get it in early if possible.

Really Naomi - please share more!

Yay! So glad to hear about the application extension!

The Director of the Fiscal Department submitted the application from what I was told.

We received money too. Using it to pay all of our extra duty right now

Oh that is great Steph!

That's great!

I am trying to implement these new guidelins, but administration is not on board yet. Any suggestions on how to get them comfortable with the idea would be great.

We are using the funds for labor costs over spring break, canopies, and other items we are purchasing due to the COVID crisis.

What type of masks are you using? Are there any brands or types of reusable masks that you would recommend?

Oh Canopies. GREAT idea, I just spent $4000 on canopies.

Yes! So helpful!

surgical masks are what we use, but our county requires everyone to have a face covering whenever they leave home, so our supply is not being used at the moment. We have a lot of people who have made masks for staff.

I will grab one and show you.

We are using fabric masks and masks provided by M&O. I don't have the brand, but I can check.

Thank you Stephanie! That would be great. Also Naomi, if you are able to check, we’d appreciate it :D

how far do sites need to be from each other?

These are the surgical masks

These are the homemade fabric masks

It's a lot of rhetoric Jenn

Stephanie if you sent links they aren’t coming through on chat. If you are able to email after call, we’ll share with folks!

I will send photos and a link to the surgical masks. they are readily available on Amazon right now.

That’s great, thank you

https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Surgical-Medical-Industrial-Quality/dp/B085Z83CFV/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=surgical+masks&qid=1587054153&sr=8-3

I have found this to be a helpful summary / comparison about waivers: http://bestpractices.nokidhungry.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/COVID%20CNP%20Waiver%20%26%20Memo%20Summary_4-13-20_0.pdf

Thank you , Jenileigh!

Thank you, we’ll include this link with our follow up email. FRAC is great :)

So the student has to pick up the meal to get the serving?

I told the CDE yesterday we were implemented changes to offer weekend meals and got the thumbs up. I saw SDUSD is doing it starting next week.

Anyone able to actually serve FFVP with all these restrictions?

So if I say only families in students in the car can get a weeks worth of produce from FFVP I can do that.

Any idea of rationale that Fruit and Vegetable program items can't be picked up by parents? Seems like a strange contradiction - especially given the produce surplus you're mentioning now.

Jenn, if I can find the loophole, I will do it. I am not planning on wasting any money right now.

I trust you will find a loophole

^^ Deidre and Stephanie we know there are many others that feel similarly

And we need to support our local farmers

I don't get it, we can give meals to parents with no students present but NOT ffvp items at that same site?

frustrating

Has anyone utilized emergency procurement yet?

Emergency procurement started week one for me

Yes, we are using emergency procurement.

I have a source that is making custom made masks for us. Lots of different fabrics. Ties for sizing. Covers full face. I’m ordering some veggie prints. Two weeks delivery time. Email me if you are interested. I can provide pics. mvillarreal@srvusd.org

As district that has never done direct purchasing from local farmers, I am not sure where to start. Is there a list of certified local farmers that we could maybe work with?

Mvillarreal@srvusd.net (not dot org)

Hi Leslie - yes the names will be on the CDFA document!

Our district is in the middle of so many farms but we have never done any farm to school purchasing either. We're the Yakima School District and I would love to learn more about getting local produce during this time.

Leslie and Melissa, definitely encourage looking through the CDFA resource and connecting with our speaker Ben :)

What kind of support is everyone interested in?

We need to get USDA to allow DOD dollars to purchase local produce

The National Farm to School Network is working with a large coalition of organizations to support local farmers. Ben, I’m sure you on on those conference calls?

CAFF has great support for formal bids! LunchAssist got to work with them for their bid toolkit. Check it out when you’re ready to bid. :)

It would be great if we could use DOD dollars to purchase from local farms

Brian have you used AgLink?

They allow you to use local farms for DOD dollars in the central valley!

Jen - I use ag link with my pilot funds

Hi! Here's a link to the list of certified farmers in CA -- https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/is/i_&_c/pdfs/CFM-CertifiedProducersByCounty-2020.pdf

Stephanie, I’m meeting with National Farm to School Network policy director next week. I agree, we need to be able to use DOD $$ for local purchases.

Thank you Nick!

Miguel, please keep us posted on feedback you get about that topic. That would be amazing..

We’ll be sending out CAFF contact info, plus links to these resources in the PDF of our slides from today

Great Miguel!!! You are always my local farmer champion. Appreciate you.

Is this a community mainly just from California? Sorry, I may have misread this zoom and want to make sure this is for all states or if it is just California?

Absolutely Stephanie! Thank you

Hi Melissa: It’s California-grown but all are welcome :) There are partners on here from out of state, too, and we’d be interested to identify what resources you need near you too.

Hi Everyone - we have the most experience and are sharing stories with a California lens, but this call and the topics are open and relevant to folks from other states of course! The farmer resources of course are specific to California, but we can see if anyone on the call can advise on national farm to school efforts that are similar.

Here is the SD County Farmer database of some farmers who are looking to sell their products: https://f2icenter.org/supporting-local-farmers/

What has been your experience with virtual meetings this month? What has been great? What has been challenging?

The Google Doodle is dedicatd to foodservice workers today!! :-)

MUTE! MUTE! MUTE!

Here is a link to the CAFF Buyer/Farmer connections sheet that you can use to connect to farms in your area. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xMKbZ59Q9es0u3AQpQSGov6wc-khPlgNPCdmF8-YHR8/edit?usp=sharing

They have been great

LOL! Mute can make all the difference Michael.

I am the worst about setting an agenda. Guilty!

ALSO everyone should look at www.google.com as stephanie pointed out. So cute :)

If anyone say the SNL skit about zoom meetings this past saturday...that was my experience the first time with my line staff. LOL

Thank you to everyone for the chat questions and input! We appreciate the local farmer support interest so much. We support CA farmers and school districts, but if you want to email me (ben@caff.org) or connect with Nick Anicich, we can try to connect you with similar support orgs in your areas.

Leslie, we will definitely connect with you on local direct sourcing. Thank you for your interest!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ when this call is over, this will give you all a great chuckle.

Stephanie, the Unprocessed Fruit and Vegetable Pilot Program is the local purchasing program piloted under the DoD program by USDA AMS. California is a pilot state. We are happy to connect you to try to get on the list to have part of your DoD allocation go towards the UFVPP program approved local vendors. As for the overall DoD program, we have heard really good feedback about the new vendor and are going to reach out to them to see if we can make their local offerings more accessible and be able to promote local farms through them.

I like that slide Mickinzie

And yes, huge thanks to Jennifer McNeil and LunchAssist for helping with our bid resources! And to CHIP for pushing emergency procurement support forward with this group.

Thank you Ben, I have used all my DoD $ for the year. The rules still attached to the FFVP make it difficult to use in this crise

crisis

how about voice level

A little aside: some tried & true fun remote working tips from National Farm to School Network http://www.farmtoschool.org/news-and-articles/our-top-tips-from-12-years-of-remote-working

Consider scheduling meetings for unconventional times like 25 or 50 minutes rather than 30 or 60 minutes. This allows people to take a basic needs break in case they have multiple back to back meetings

Thanks everyone!

That’s a good one Gail. You can remind folks to check their mic and volume before logging into virtual platforms.

This was literally my first experience with zoom with my site staff; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3byTN8NTCkc

Love that tip Maddy!

Maddy that’s a great tip. Both Healthier Gen and NFSN are awesome at virtual work. We’ll share those tips in our follow up.

Our second zoom meeting as a tutorial meeting, which have made the subsequent meetings much, much more productive.

I work for Healthier Generation so that makes sense!

Or use the chat box! For those who are more introverted it can work well!

Virtual meetings have overall gone really smoothly! I think everyone’s overall use comfort with them has improved. Favorite part is being able to where pajamas and a button up at the same time (joking…sometimes). Challenges have been mostly with connectivity - feels like internet and video chat services have been dropping people a lot.

As an introvert who works for a virtual organization. Allowing time to process is key.

wear*

Agreed, Anita!

Time for our open discussion. Feel free to unmute or type into this box with any stories, questions, or points of discussion. We’d like to hear from you!

It's not a barrier

SFSP it is still 1/2 a mile

If possible you might also consider breaking up into small virtual meetings and then coming back as a group. Its a new thing we have been doing this year.

I have a charter school site across from a district high school

Hi Holly - are you both serving during this time?

We have had Ventura County farmers donating to us

Jennifer, yes

A lot of our local vendors we already use:

Ok that is a good to know Holly. Stephanie says 1/2 mile rule is still in play for SFSP but I’m thinking it is not for emergency SSO but correct me if I’m wrong!

We are continuing to use Foster Farms, Fiore di Pasta, True Natural Foods, etc. Not necessarily local farmers, but local vendors

Great Stephanie!

As I've experiences it, all the rules went out the window for SSO!

True story it seems!

I'm operating sites right next to other feeding sites and sites without area eligibility.

All approved by the CDE.

Awesome Stephanie!!

Yeah Stephanie!!

So great!! Thank you Stephanie!

Thank you all. I have another zoom meeting in one minute. Great job everyone. Keep up the great work

Please send cafeteria safety signage.

this was an awesome call, thank you for hosting

Thank you

Thank you Lunch Assist and Center for Ecoliteracy! Great call today

Thank you for hosting the call!

Will you be sending out this presentation?

Thank you - this is so helpful

Thank you for a great call!

my email: nstewart@sdchip.org if anyone wants to reach out about local San Diego County farmers

Thank you!

Sorry, my mic isn't working. We emailed the CDE at the beginning to receive clarification about emergency procurement. The CDE clarified that we could use emergency procurement and recommended keeping Governor Newsom's initial announcement.

Thanks to everyone

Thank you so much!

Thank you

Thank you Naomi! We’ll share that out

thank you!

Thanks team!