Schools Leaders Eye Compost Rollout

As New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) searches for a new food service director, the district is also looking to make some sustainability-centered changes to how it handles what doesn’t get eaten — including by introducing school-based composting programs.

Composting and food waste were at the forefront of last Wednesday’s Board of Education Food Service Task Force Committee meeting, which was held online via Zoom. 

NHPS Chief of Operations Thomas Lamb presented to the committee about what current and future efforts the district is working on in alignment with the ​“Climate Emergency” resolution that the board adopted at the start of the school year in September. 

According to the resolution, the Food Service Committee was tasked with creating ​“a plan within six months working with the New Haven Food Policy Council to expand access to locally-grown, healthy, sustainable food, decrease packaging waste, and increase opportunities for food donation, food rescue, and composting.”

Lamb said he is working to create a more environmentally friendly district while also trying to fill the role of director of food services. The position is currently filled by Gail Cairns-Sharry, who plans to retire at the end of this school year in June after working for the district for 10 years. 

At the most recent Food Service Task Force Committee meeting, Lamb announced that the district received a ​“good cadre” of applications for the top food-services position and he and Cairns-Sharry have narrowed down the candidate list based on resumes to a few for first round interviews. Those are slated to take place this week. ​“Hopefully we’ll find someone that will be able to fill those big shoes,” he said. 

Lamb added that the district hopes to select a final candidate before the end of the school year to begin transitioning them into the new role. As COO, Lamb said that the directors of food services and transportation are huge roles that need to be caught up to speed before next school year. Currently the district has hired Teddi Barra as interim director of transportation after the resignation of Carl Jackson June 30, 2022. 

Lamb is working with ABM Industries Energy and Sustainability Manager Michelle Martinelli, who is partnering with NHPS to address the district’s sustainability efforts related to its food services. 

“We’re already doing a lot of different things and I think it’s important to show what we’re already doing, but also be able to say now let’s improve upon that. Let’s take what we’ve done and take it to the next step,” Lamb said. 

Before the district considers offering a district-wide composting program or even a composting pilot, which Lamb said would come first, it will first look to select a replacement for Cairns-Sharry. 

In an email to the Independent after Wednesday’s meeting, Lamb said the composting program would be implemented ​“as quickly as we reasonably can” once the new food service director is brought on board to allow them to ​“help take the lead in implementing them.”

During the presentation Lamb offered details of what his team is considering and what it still has to figure out when it comes to a district-wide compost program. 

“Whether we do composting at the school level or we do something on the district level has yet to be determined. There are some schools that are already doing it, some schools that are doing it as a project within their schools,” Lamb said. ​“But then taking a step back and looking at it from a holistic level, how do we do that and be consistent with it throughout the district is the question that I’ve posed to my team to try and figure out.” 

Most recently Wilbur Cross High School, New Haven Academy, and Sound School students and staff have begun putting together school-based compost pilots with local partner Peels & Wheels. 

Cross’ composting program will be run in collaboration with the New Haven Climate Movement’s Youth Climate Action Team (YCAT) and Cross’ Environmental Club. 

Cross’ environmental club co-leader Lila Kleppner said so far the club has done research on composting and visited Common Ground to see a composting system first hand and learn about the challenges on composting in schools. 

Domingo Medina, founder and owner of Peels & Wheels, visited and spoke with the Cross Environmental Club twice about composting options. This week the students have a meeting scheduled to get program approval from principal Matt Brown and the head of facilities, Heaven Hopkins. 

“We hope to begin composting on a small scale in the next few weeks. Peels and Wheels will be processing the compost,” Kleppner said in an email to the Independent. ​“Before we begin composting, we will be going around to homerooms to explain what we are doing and why composting is important to educate our school community and limit the contaminants.”

Peels & Wheels also has a long standing partnership with Common Ground High School. 

Board of Education member Orlando Yarborough, who chairs the Food Service Committee, suggested the idea to have school compost programs that can be used to provide compost to schools like Common Ground that already have built-out gardens. 

Lamb said the district would have to consider obstacles like compost transportation. ​“Just looking for an easier way to be able to ensure that we’re not stretching our resources that are already thin, thinner,” he said. 

Yarborough also suggested offering school-created compost for pick up by neighbors running community gardens and home gardens to ​“reduce needing to transport it other places.” 

Lamb said he is currently working with nonprofit partner Center For EcoTechnology to begin a compost pilot at a few schools once a food service director is selected. 

“The service is relatively either free or cost-reduced depending upon the scope of what we are looking to do,” he said. 

However when it comes to composting resources and tools, Lamb said, ​“with 42 schools any one thing is not cheap” so the district is trying to work around the financial challenges of implementing such a program.

A district-wide compost program would first benefit from schools creating ​“green teams” in coordination with principals and students to task school communities with getting the community excited about composting. ​“I think there’s a lot of energy around this already. It’s just giving them a venue to be able to put their passion into action,” Lamb said. 

Yarborough suggested competitions or recognition incentives be offered to school green teams to encourage kids to get involved and build school pride.

“A big part of this is being able to create something that’s long term sustainable because I know we’ve had these programs in the past and they’ve kind of fizzled out as students have moved on and graduated, and teachers had moved from school to school or principals have moved form school to school,” Lamb said. ​“But trying to create something that’s forward thinking and sustainable long term no matter who’s there.” 

Yarborough also suggested sustainable work be a regular topic on the board’s agenda or a committee agenda to acknowledge and celebrate the work. 

In research of school districts like Portland, Denver, and Austin, Lamb said many have green task forces made up of board members, principals, and community members.

The work will also include providing education resources to students to better understand the value of sustainability and how to do it, which Lamb said he plans to work with the board’s Teaching and Learning Committee on. 

NHPS Chief of Staff Michael Finley suggested during the meeting that school health teachers be brought into the conversation to educate students about how to recycle and compost and its impacts. 

“Maybe to provide our students with a hierarchy of steps to take, and the first might be, in terms of food, if you can eat it, eat it, because that’s the goal. If someone else can eat it, share it, and if it needs to be thrown away, absolutely see whether it can be composted,” Yarbrough said. ​“Maybe that also can just help direct behavior so they can know the goal is not to make it compost, and not to waste food.” 

Less Plastic, Looking Local

During Lamb’s presentation he also highlighted that the public schools have shifted to using compostable paper products like lunch trays. The district also no longer packages yogurt, salad, sandwiches to reduce package waste and now serves such foods from a serving line. 

To improve its efforts the districts’ central kitchen is focusing on purchasing locally grown and produced products like bread, produce, and milk from within Connecticut. 

“It would be impractical for us to be able to say that these products would be 100 percent available locally grown within New Haven,” Lamb said. 

Over the past year the district has been intentionally working to contract local food vendors and growers for produce, baked goods, and dairy products.

Yarborough requested Lamb present a map to the committee of where school food products are coming from. 

All food products are produced in the U.S. to meet FDA guidelines and reduce transportation. 

Lamb said once the district selects a new food service director it will develop child nutrition-focused surveys to gather data on what fruits and vegetables students want in place of menu items. The surveys will aim to engage the community on food to offer students for alternative menu options, Lamb added. 

“We’re trying to determine what that will look like and how we will go about having those surveys and creating the data to be able to drive changes in alternative menu items that are more nutritional conscious,” he said. 

Some schools have food share tables where students can drop unopened food items they don’t want for others to eat or take home. The district is encouraging all schools cafeterias to create food share tables, Lamb said. 

“It creates a kind of food pantry for the school,” he said. ​“It does also give the students an opportunity to take food home where there may be some disparities that are within their family group.”

The district is also partnering with local nonprofit, Havens Harvest, to donate unused food in the schools at end of the week to redistribute in the community. 

“By supporting the students in using a food share table we are diverting food from waste,” Yarborough said. ​“It would just go into the trash so this is a way that perfectly good food can be diverted.” 

Lamb said the district plans to collect data on what food items are being donated to reduce waste and better calculate food orders.

Additionally, food services staffer Susan Harris gave an update on the food gap subgroup’s food distribution last Tuesday in partnership with United Way at the Shack, Truman, Lincoln Bassett, and John Martinez Schools. ​“We had a good turnout thanks to the lovely weather,” she said. 

Since the start of the Covid pandemic, NHPS has worked to identify its food gaps for those students who often rely on their schools for nutritious daily meals. It has established food gap distributions during the winter, spring, and summer breaks to keep families fed when schools are closed. 

Harris added that data on the distribution would be provided at the committees next meeting.