Improving School Meal Quality and Exploring Food Systems in Michigan

Michigan Department of Education received a Team Nutrition grant in FY20 from USDA. This grant was a 4 year grant (Enhanced version of the School Nutrition Strategies, Training, Action Plans, and Resources (E-STAR) program) to provide job-skills training and tailor technical assistance to school nutrition managers to improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities related to meal services (e.g., meal preparation, procurement, inventory management, nutrition, and menu management) and to increase their capacity to train frontline staff on key school nutrition topics. The outcome of this grant was to improve school meal quality and students’ perception of meal quality through developing action plans with targeted strategies and activities to achieve these outcomes.

MPHI team was the evaluator for this grant. In FY23, this grant was complemented by a project funded through MHEF, and lead by MPHI team, to help understand challenges and opportunities faced by the school nutrition managers to incorporate fresh and local foods in their meal services to improve school meal quality. There was a large variability identified in access, availability and affordability of fresh and local foods which impacted the ability of school nutrition managers to improve school meal quality. This additional exploration highlights the importance of understanding key challenges and barriers situated upstream of the school food system which could impact student health and wellbeing.

E-STAR study participants were successful in implementing key strategies and activities through development of action plans to improve meal quality and student perception of meal quality. Though there were challenges faced to procure fresh and local foods, many participants were able to increase menu variety, enhance visual appeal of meals, and enhance culinary preparation techniques. In addition, they were able to make changes in their school environment and enhance nutrition education and marketing efforts to promote healthy meals program at their schools. This grant also incorporated training the frontline staff at school that improved their job skills like customer communication and experience.