Sometimes change happens in the most unexpected places. When I learned that Baltimore City Public Schools was on a mission to change the way its more than 80,000 students thought about food, I have to admit, I was surprised. The cash strapped school system has long faced difficult challenges and the last place I expected to see noticeable reform was with its food services department. To top that off, you could have bowled me over when I heard that the City Schools’ new chef/dietitian, Melissa Mahoney, convinced her boss, Tony Geraci, to let her develop her own Meatless Monday lunch menus. To be honest, I doubt that Mahoney needed to do a lot of convincing. When it comes to dreaming up innovative and cost effective ways to feed kids healthy, tasty, whole foods, Geraci isn’t shy about pushing the envelope. It’s Geraci’s bold and sometimes brash entrepreneur spirit that has captured the attention of food policy experts across the country, including the White House.

Last week Geraci, hired a little over a year ago to reform Baltimore City Public Schools’ food services program, was invited to testify before a congressional sub-committee that is looking for innovative practices to improve child nutrition.  Geraci touted what the Baltimore school system has already achieved:

We now provide fresh fruit with every lunch we serve. All over Baltimore, students are learning what an actual, locally grown peach tastes like instead of some synthesized peach flavoring. And as of this school year all of the peaches, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers—all of our fruits and vegetables—come from Maryland farms.

While many credit Geraci’s tenacious leadership abilities for what has been accomplished in Baltimore, Geraci will be the first to tell you that much of the groundwork was laid by a strong group of volunteers and innovative community organizers dedicated to changing the way people and children think about food in the Baltimore region. In 2006, a study by the Baltimore Efficiency and Economy Foundation highlighted reasons why school lunch reform in City Schools was sorely needed, and even listed Geraci as a potential consultant. Geraci says, however, that if it were not for a small group of students, whom he calls “school lunch revolutionists,” he would not be in Baltimore today. One of those young revolutionists, Alice Sheehan, was invited to share her story at the same congressional hearing with Geraci. Sheehan is currently an 8^th grader in the Baltimore City Public Schools system, and she wasn’t shy about telling members of the House Committee on Education and Labor what spurred her and her fellow school lunch revolutionists to stand up and demand that school leaders “get rid of the overcooked, tasteless and just plain disgusting food.” She went on:

[More than 3 years ago] our story started with the endless grumbling about lunches at school. Tired of the complaints and ready for action, our student council and others together took samples of our prepackaged lunch down to the Baltimore City School Board to demonstrate what it would be like to eat this every day. If that is what they feed us, we said, they should have to eat it too. The Board turned up its nose: no thanks! But the deed was done: we had started acting and not just complaining.

With the help of their Social Studies teacher, Peter French, Sheehan and a handful of her fellow classmates, who were studying the U.S. Constitution at the time, came up with a Cafeteria Bill of Rights.

The Cafeteria Bill of Rights include:

• The right to nutritious and delicious food for breakfast and lunch
• The right to fresh fruit and fresh vegetables each day
• The right to choose-more than one main selection each day
• The right to give feedback and have input on the quality and selections made and have our input be given serious consideration

Following an impressive grassroots campaign and a Baltimore Sun article critical of the food quality and taste disparities between City Schools and nearby better funded schools, the young school lunch reformers scheduled a meeting to talk with the newly hired Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Andrés Alonso. Sheehan described the meeting:

… we gave him our Cafeteria Bill of Rights, and told him of our expectations for a better and healthier school lunch system. He was sympathetic with our cause, and admitted how much he disliked the pre-packaged food at his own cafeteria. He said he would do something about it. And he did. The NEW director of food and nutrition, Mr. Geraci, has been working hard to improve our lunches ever since.

Last month White House Assistant Chef and Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass along with officials from the U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture met up with Geraci (in photo, right), an accomplished chef himself, at the City Schools’ new Great Kids Farm. The 33-acre organic teaching farm — complete with a variety of vegetables and fruits, not to mention goats, chickens and bees — is Geraci’s pride and joy. Geraci says the farm serves as a powerful tool to teach children about food by reconnecting them to how it’s grown and raised and teaching them that food doesn’t come from the grocery store. He proudly told his guests that the farm is virtually self-sufficient thanks to the hard work of its farm manager Greg Strella, dozens of volunteers, donations from non-profits, revenue from its community supported agriculture shares and sales to local restaurants.