Virginia Healthy School Food Pathway

The USDA National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is the 2nd-largest hunger relief program in the United States, providing approximately 30 million children with nearly half of their daily caloric intake. In Virginia, over 703,000 students participate in the NSLP and more than 391,000 in the School Breakfast Program (SBP) each year (USDA, 2024). The federal government invests roughly $20 billion into these programs annually (CSR, 2022). While funding supports policy, reform, administration, nutrition, food quality, eligibility, and procurement, it omits maintaining and upskilling the school food workforce. Without trained and skilled food service professionals, scratch-food school food programs cannot exist.

Labor shortages are a common challenge for school districts and were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic: 90.5% of school districts report labor shortages as a challenge for their programs (School Nutrition Association, 2024). One of the key barriers to expanding scratch cooking in school meal programs is having staff skilled in culinary, procurement, and financial knowledge (Vincent et al., 2020). Our program reskills and upskills older, often female, BIPOC, mid-to-late career school food workers, improving earning and income potential for employees while offering healthy scratch-cooked food for students.

The Chef Ann Foundation’s (CAF) Healthy School Food Pathway program (HSFP) helps older and experienced school food workers gain the skills, knowledge, and capacity they need to create and manage successful K–12 scratch-cook meal operations. Program participants can start or advance on a mission-driven culinary career in scratch-cooked school food through federally-registered Pre-Apprenticeships, Apprenticeships, and Fellowships. The Pre-Apprenticeship is a paid, 7-week learning experience that provides an entry point to a healthy, scratch-cooked school food career. The Apprenticeship program provides an additional 9 months of paid, on-the-job learning over a full school year and includes online course learning through the Institute of Child Nutrition (59 hours) and the CAF’s School Food Institute (40 hours); 18 live virtual learning sessions with scratch-cooking and school food experts (45 hours); and networking and learning opportunities with other school food professionals. Fellowship continues both on-site and virtual learning, including a capstone project, to support successful transitions to school food leadership. The overarching, long-term goal of the program is to create systems change across multiple levels, increasing the knowledge and capacity of school food workers and ultimately putting them on a pathway to higher-skilled and higher-paid employment while increasing healthy food options for students. 

Historically, school food workers are more diverse than the general workforce: they are more likely to be female (94% vs. 42%), older (mean age of 50 vs. 42), Hispanic (21% vs. 17%), and Black (18% vs. 12%) (American Community Survey, 2022). School food jobs have been defined by low pay, physical demands, and limited hours (CRS, 2022). The HSFP program addresses these challenges through paid, on-the-job training for pre-apprentice, apprentice, and fellowship participants so individuals can gain the skills needed to advance their careers while getting paid. 

HSFP supports school districts moving toward a scratch cook model, where more skilled, full-time positions with culinary knowledge are required. Mid-career employees with culinary training will have more defined pathways to higher-paying leadership positions within school food, advancing their careers, fostering greater sustainability in the workforce, and benefiting the local economy. We are recruiting and advocating for higher wages based on skill attainment and upgraded job descriptions through our partners at VDOE and the Dept. of Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS). The HSFP program fosters system-level change, providing an opportunity for individuals to positively influence the health of school-aged children as they build careers with long-term benefits and potential for advancement.

For 15 years, CAF has provided technical assistance to support school districts nationwide in transitioning to a scratch-cook operational model. The HSFP program was piloted and tested in California and Colorado schools and is now expanding to New York and Virginia. In December of 2023, CAF announced a unique new partnership called Virginia Food for Virginia Kids (VFVK) with the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to identify barriers and capacity to procure, process, and serve more fresh, locally sourced food in Virginia schools. We have collaborated with VDOE to build division-specific strategic plans to incorporate scratch cooking, utilize local food, and guide food service directors to maximize efficiency and maintain sustainable programming. Our work with the VDOE to date has been very positive and effectively laid the groundwork for the Virginia HSFP program. We look forward to building on this momentum! 

Through the design phase of HSFP, CAF has successfully built a coalition with five school divisions across the state, local community colleges, industry associations, nonprofit organizations, and state agencies, including the Dept. of Aging and Rehabilitative Services to support participant recruitment. Our coalition met virtually several times in 2024 and will be gathering in-person in February of 2025 to advance our pilot programming. Coalition members have provided valuable feedback throughout the design phase, informing the pilot program with real-time information from school divisions across Virginia. We are now fully prepared to launch our pilot phase, scaling what we have learned to date in other states while implementing programming tailored to the needs of Virginia school divisions and aligned with our VDOE partnership.

While we have piloted the HSFP program in California and Colorado, this project will be the pilot phase for the state of Virginia. As outlined above, we have been actively working with the VDOE for the past year on the VFVK program. Through that work, we partnered with the VA Dept. of Labor and Industries to train school food workers on scratch-cooking models. We have also built a coalition with relevant stakeholders from school divisions, community colleges, nonprofit organizations, local government agencies, and industry associations. The coalition has been informing the design phase and providing needed feedback to ensure the pilot program is positioned to be successful.

During the pilot phase, five school divisions in Fauquier, Stafford, Prince Edward, and Amherst Counties, and Virginia Beach City public schools will be included in the initial cohort, with an estimated three additional school divisions joining each cohort. Our pilot project is expected to last approximately two years, and our goal is to integrate at least 17 school divisions into the program by the end of the pilot period. We have successfully identified the first five school divisions and have close working relationships with school food leadership in each.

Chef Ann Foundation | Healthy School Food Pathway

Addressing the challenges of school food via workforce solutions is an innovative way to ensure that school districts across the country can implement better practices to benefit employees and students alike. By reskilling and upskilling school food workers, CAF programming ensures those employees have the abilities and capacity to advance their career pathway and earn higher wages. Higher levels of technical skills, better pay, and job security reduce the stigma often associated with school food work while simultaneously addressing the challenges school districts face when maintaining staff for these positions. Transitioning school food work into a culinary career pathway improves outcomes for often older and marginalized women of color, in particular, and stabilizes the local economy. 

Improved equity outcomes extend beyond the school food workforce. Data indicate that scratch cooking of school meals can increase meal participation, student health and wellness, academic performance, and financial sustainability of meal programs, while also supporting the local economy and improving environmental impacts (Center for Ecoliteracy, 2014). Improving school meals is a highly effective way to address equity in food access, significantly benefiting students from lower-income communities. School meal programs are one of the largest food assistance programs in the country, providing up to half a student’s daily calories. Unfortunately, the reality is that most schools do not have the knowledge, staff, or time to make healthy food access a priority. These shortfalls particularly affect children in low-income areas, where school food often tends to be ultra processed and the majority of students are reliant on receiving at least two meals at school every day. The potential reach for our programming is significant - ultimately, we aim to reach more than 100,000 students across school districts during the design, pilot, and implementation phases of the HSFP program in Virginia.

HSFP has both short and long-term outcomes that deeply impact the communities where we work. In the short-term, we contribute to increasing the skilled workforce in a community, addressing challenges and building capacity to increase a school’s ability to develop and manage scratch-cook operations. In our Virginia pilot project, these outcomes are well-aligned with the VFVK program and are intended to advance the mission of CAF as well as VDOE. 

Immediate outcomes during the pilot phase include:

1. Recruiting and onboarding 17 school divisions across Virginia to serve as participant host sights. 

2. Enrolling a minimum of 83 pre-apprentices and 23 apprentices to begin training at host sites. We anticipate at least 50% of participants will be current school food workers, likely older women and BIPOC staff, who want to build their skills and professional capacity. Of the 106 participants, at least 25% will increase their earned wages through their added training.

3. Creating a network of wrap-around services and support for program participants by partnering with community-based organizations in each region.

Long-term impact goals focus on two broader groups:

1. School food workers will have increased skills, knowledge, and capacity via the apprenticeship program, leading to 40% of participants securing higher pay and more sustainable employment, benefitting workers, students, and the local economy.

2. As a result of highly trained school food workers engaging in scratch-cooking, 50% of students in K-12 schools across Virginia will have high-quality, healthy food options that support good health and learning. 

While immediate impact relates directly to school food workers having the training and skills needed to implement scratch-cooking operations, long-term goals are about improving health and education outcomes for students. We believe this innovative approach to addressing school food staffing and workforce challenges ultimately leads to better student and community-based outcomes overall.

The Chef Ann Foundation has 67 full-time employees and one part-time employee. Over 30 of these team members work on the National HSFP, and five are currently dedicated to supporting the HSFP work in Virginia. As the program in Virginia grows, the number of team members supporting the program will grow. Additionally, in 2024, CAF worked with over 35 contractors and a number of other organizations, such as state agencies, community colleges, universities, K-12 school districts, etc. 

Since 2009, CAF has been providing technical assistance to support school districts in transitioning to a scratch-cook operational model. Over the years, the need for more workforce development programming to build capacity, develop diverse school food leaders, and uplift school food as a profession in order to maintain employees has become clear. In response, CAF designed the first-ever federally registered pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship program for scratch-cook school food workers: the Healthy School Food Pathway (HSFP) program. HSFP programming launched in California in 2022, expanded to Colorado in 2023 and to New York and Virginia in 2024.

The Chef Ann Foundation is dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) both among our team and our school food programs. We believe these principles are central to our work, which strives to ensure all children have access to fresh, healthy, and delicious school food every day. Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging is anchored in our core values, including how we hire team members, recruit board members, work with contractors and program participants, and our commitment to incorporate DEIB practices into our daily work. 

Some recent examples of our commitment to DEIB include: 

• In 2023, CAF team members actively engaged in the Food Solutions New England’s Racial Equity Challenge to raise awareness, change understanding, and shift behaviors, going beyond individual racism to demystify structural and institutional racism.

• The CAF team consulted with DEIB expert, Regan Byrd, to expand our knowledge and understanding on ways to take actionable steps to advance racial equity, not only in our team culture and norms but also in the work we do. Regan has been an integral partner in creating pieces of the HSPF program. 

• CAF team members have worked to integrate racial equity principles into our programming and hiring practices. We have incorporated culturally relevant recipes, diversifying grant recipients and program participants and offering Spanish translations on various platforms, including the School Food Institute (SFI) courses, The Lunch Box (TLB) content, and HSFP curriculum.

Our DEIB principles collectively inform our decisions, shape our initiatives, and drive our mission. DEIB at CAF means a commitment to dismantling structural and institutional racism, fostering awareness, and inspiring actions that align with the broader goal of achieving true equity and justice for all, specifically in the realm of health.

Our work's key customers and beneficiaries include school divisions, school food leadership, and program participants. A secondary beneficiary of our work includes school children who gain access to healthy scratch-cooked meals as a result of our programming. Our programming provides scratch-cooked school food training, technical assistance, and ongoing capacity building and educational support. Our services are provided via in-person and online pre-apprenticeships, apprenticeships and fellowships, as well as online resources such as The Lunch Box and The School Food Institute available through the CAF website. Staff provide ongoing technical assistance to school food leadership and can even provide grant funding to help a school build out its kitchen space to facilitate scratch-cooking.

Our value proposition for school food workers and, on a larger scale, school divisions is that the CAF model effectively reskills and upskills current staff to build their expertise and ensure they feel valued and have strong career pathways. School divisions can also more effectively recruit new staff who are excited about the prospects of culinary careers in school food. Our model reduces the burden on school division leaders who do not often have the capacity to otherwise invest in current and new employees. Finally, our model helps overcome the status quo of highly processed, heat-and-serve meals for students by making locally sourced scratch-cooked food operations manageable and sustainable. As outlined above, our impact is two-fold: 

1. We reskill and upskill school food workers to ensure they have the training and skills needed to implement scratch-cooking operations, leading to higher pay, job stability, and improved career prospects. 

2. We improve outcomes for students by making high quality, nutritious food available at school, leading to better health and education outcomes for school-aged children.

Overall, our organization works very hard to diversify our income streams so that we are financially sustainable in the long-term. The majority of our funding comes from private foundations, corporate funders, government contracts and community foundations based in communities across the country, reflecting the wide reach of our programs. The HSFP program is a multi-phase, multi-year program involving varied costs and funder involvement depending on the phase of the program. CAF has been fortunate enough to secure some initial grant funding for this program. To date, we have received $400k from the From Now on Fund. The 2023 funding covers the costs of the design phase budget. We are working to secure funding from additional foundation partners to guarantee funding for this program's pilot and implementation phases. Through a braided funding model, the program will move from being funded through a collaborative of private philanthropy in the design and pilot phases with the primary goal of being sustained long-term through state and federal funding in the full implementation phase and beyond.

Challenges and solutions are ubiquitous across the country; the need to reskill and upskill the school food workforce so that students can benefit from healthy scratch-cooked meals exists in every school district nationwide. Similarly, the stigma attached to school food work is common across the country; these jobs traditionally require less education, with lower pay and status. The opportunity to work with the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve will elevate our solution to a national platform to advance our work in new and exciting ways. Ultimately, we want to change the way America’s school food workers are trained in order to implement scratch-cooking in all schools. We aim to equip school food workers with the skills and expertise they need to effectively pursue a culinary career with room for advancement in school food. The Chef Ann Foundation is dedicated to promoting whole-ingredient, scratch-cooking, enabling schools to serve the healthiest, tastiest meals so that kids are well-nourished and ready to learn. Having our solution highlighted on a national scale will raise awareness about the need to reskill and upskill school food workers, ultimately advancing our mission to bring healthy school food to children across the country.