Chesapeake Institute for Local Sustainable Food & Agriculture

Our organization currently houses two programs – Real Food for Kids – Montgomery (RFKM), which mobilizes parents, students, educators and community members to promote policies, practices and educational opportunities that improve the food environment and general health and well-being of students in the Montgomery County Public Schools, and Brickyard Educational Farm (BEF), which is currently working to establish an educational farm on 20-acres of land owned by the Montgomery County Public School System.

RFKM advocates at the local, district and state levels to bring about changes. At the local level, we recruit and train parents to serve as school representatives, start wellness committees and advocate for changes at individual schools. At the district level we advocate to the Division of Food and Nutrition Services through the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, and directly through e-mail, in-person meetings, and by hosting educational workshops. We also testify and write letters to the Board of Education and school administrators. We work at the state level via a program of School Food Environment Grades and through statewide legislation.

RFKM has been successfully advocating for and achieving positive changes to the school food in Montgomery County for the last 3.75 years, have built up a grassroots following of more than 4300 parents and community supporters and have representatives to 55 of the 202 public schools in the county.

A running list of RFKM's accomplishments can be found at: http://www.realfoodforkidsmontgomery.org/accomplishments.php. In brief, our advocacy has led to the elimination of strawberry milk, a delay in vending machine sales of soda and candy until 30 minutes after the end of the school day, free bottles of water for elementary school children, a new policy prohibiting several synthetic food dyes and other dangerous food additives from future food contracts for all school food, changes to the Wellness Regulation to prohibit the artificial sweeteners aspartame and Acesulfame potassium in food sold from midnight until 30 minutes after the end of the school day, the establishment of a district-wide Wellness Committee during school year 15-16 to make recommendations about the implementation of the Wellness Policy and Regulation, and better transparency about the existence of a la carte items sold in cafeterias. In individual schools, our representatives' work has led to the formation of more than 10 wellness committees, the replacement or removal of unhealthy a la carte items; healthier fundraisers, parties and school snacks and policies about these; the installation of salad bars and school gardens; and wellness and nutrition education programming for children and their families.