At Castle Rock School District, student health goes hand-in-hand with quality education.
Shelby Garrett, the district’s Food Service Director, wants to uphold that standard.
Garrett, also the Business Manager, recently won the Healthy Kids-Healthy Schools grant from OSPI, which is bringing in over $140,000 for the students of Castle Rock. These funds, which can be utilized until June 2025, will help improve nutrition and physical activity health in schools across the district.
Although student nutrition starts in the kitchen, Castle Rock School District’s kitchen staff currently faces a few hurdles.
At the high school, as students enjoy their lunch and socialize while taking a break from classes, kitchen staff work extra hard behind the scenes to provide them with a nutritious meal using a stove range the size of one you might find in your kitchen at home. When it’s time to open the garage door separating the kitchen from the cafeteria, it’s all hands on deck because the door is too physically heavy for staff to open on their own. The Healthy Kids-Healthy Schools grant will provide the high school with a full-sized commercial stove range and an electric garage door. This equipment will enable our staff to prepare meals more efficiently and devote additional time to enhancing student nutrition.
Meanwhile, a new double-decker oven at Castle Rock Middle School will replace one of their current ovens, which is so low to the ground that kitchen staff have to get down on their knees to use it.
While cooking two meals daily for over a thousand students is already a unique challenge, it is even trickier with outdated or inefficient equipment. This was one of the main reasons Garrett applied for the grant.
“It seems like every year I’m buying thousands of dollars in kitchen equipment because our buildings are old, our equipment’s old,” Garrett explained.
With additional improvements, such as a new salad bar for the high school, a food processor for the middle school, and energy-efficient ice machines for the elementary, middle, and high schools, Castle Rock School District will be able to more efficiently and effectively provide for students’ nutritional needs.
The second half of the grant will help create a more equitable environment for students while playing or learning outside. All schools will receive communication boards that allow nonverbal students to communicate better with their teachers and fellow students during recess or physical education classes.
Playing basketball will also be more accessible. The elementary school will resurface its outdoor basketball court and replace the hoops, and the high school will install a new concrete basketball court and hoops. To keep students hydrated throughout the day, the middle and high schools will also receive water bottle refill stations in their gyms.
For Garrett, student health is a priority, so winning this grant was especially critical for her.
“In my personal and professional life, nutrition and physical health are so important,” she stated. “Health is so important, so we should do anything extra we can for the students. I’m so excited about this opportunity from OSPI and that we will get to bring this to the students.”
Preference for this grant was given to schools with a high percentage of students receiving free and reduced meals. The condition of current equipment and barriers the district faces were also strongly considered.
This is the second time Castle Rock School District has won this grant. Previously, funds from this grant were used to build the greenhouse at the high school.
Learn more about the Healthy Kids-Healthy Schools grant, or contact Shelby Garrett at sgarrett@crschools.org.
