CLF Honors Baltimore City Public Schools for Healthy Menu | | From left: Dr. Robert Lawrence, CLF Director; Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes; JHSPH Dean Michael Klag; Tony Geraci, Baltimore City Public Schools Food and Nutrition Director; Greg Strella, Manager, Great Kids Farm; Neil E. Duke, Chair of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners; and Rev. Jerome Stephens, Statewide Field Representative for Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin. |
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has presented Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) with the Center’s 2009 Award for Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education. The award was presented to Neil E. Duke, Chair of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners and Anthony Geraci, City Schools Director of Food and Nutrition Services, by Dr. Robert Lawrence, Director of the Center for a Livable Future, and Dr. Michael Klag, Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The presentation was made in a ceremony at Great Kids Farm, City Schools’ organic farm and education center in Catonsville, MD.
| Dr. Robert Lawrence
CLF Director |
“We are pleased to recognize the outstanding efforts by Baltimore City Public Schools in reintroducing healthy food choices back into school cafeterias throughout the city,” said Dr. Lawrence. The CLF award recognizes individuals and groups for “outstanding contributions to advancing our understanding of the complex interactions between humans and the environment." Noted Dr. Lawrence, “We believe the work by the school system’s administration, including City Schools’ Food and Nutrition Director Anthony Geraci, are more than worthy of CLFs’ top honor. CLF hopes Baltimore City Public Schools will become a national model for each school system in the nation to follow.”
| | From left: Dr. Robert Lawrence, CLF Director; Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes; JHSPH Dean Michael Klag; Tony Geraci, Baltimore City Public Schools Food and Nutrition Director |
Baltimore City Public Schools has been working on bringing locally grown foods back into lunchrooms and has recently incorporated a Meatless Monday menu plan for the entire school system. School system staff have been working with local farmers to provide fresh produce and with distributors who are committed to finding local suppliers. In addition, City Schools has introduced a teaching farm, Great Kids Farm, and is developing the resources to establish a garden at each of the system’s more than 200 schools.
“It is a great honor to accept this award on behalf of all the students, staff, families and community members that have made possible this start to providing healthier, better-tasting meals in our schools,” said City Schools CEO Andrés Alonso. “But this is just a start. The next step is to take our students’ experiences with growing and eating fresh foods and turn them into educational and vocational opportunities so that they may in turn become urban farmers, chefs, scientists, entrepreneurs and, most of all, informed citizens.”
Following the presentation of the award, dignitaries, school officials, students and staff received a walking tour of the 33-acre Great Kids Farm and tasted a sample of the Meatless Monday menu.
| | Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes |
Past organizations and individuals honored with the CLF Award, include Dennis R. Keeney, PhD, Emeritus Director of the Aldo Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University; the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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