SPRINGFIELD – Home Grown Springfield is working to bring healthy meals to Springfield Public Schools students.

Home Grown Springfield, the Culinary and Nutrition Program of Springfield Public Schools, is a partnership between the district and Sodexo. Together they work to ensure that students in Springfield are receiving healthy, diverse and delicious meals.

Each day, Home Grown Springfield serves breakfast and lunch to students in grades kindergarten through 12.

Home Grown Springfield began four years ago when there was a project in a marketing class at Putnam High School. Students were asked to develop a new brand for the Food Service Program. This led to TaMaya Romero coming up with the brand and logo for Home Grown Springfield.

“We’ve been running with that ever since,” said Abby Getman-Skillicorn, student engagement manager for Springfield Public Schools and Home Grown Springfield.

Home Grown Springfield’s culinary and nutrition center was then opened in April 2019, which allowed them to begin cooking food from scratch for the schools.

According to Getman-Skillicorn, many of the Springfield Public School buildings are old and did not have a functional kitchen for cooking.

“We now have the capability to do more of our own scratch-cooking for school food, which is something that had not really been an option for us in Springfield,” she said. “Building this facility really allowed us to have a greater capacity to make the kinds of foods we know students want to actually eat.”

Every day, Home Grown Springfield’s chefs cook up diverse meals such as curry chicken, jambalaya, ramen noodles, General Tso’s chicken, rice and beans, chicken parmesan and more for Springfield students.

Getman-Skillicorn said that Home Grown Springfield works to purchase and use as many locally sourced items as possible.

“We have been working aggressively on increasing the amount of locally purchased items or locally grown items and so this past year, even during COVID-19, 18 percent of our food costs were from New England growers or our food producers,” she said.

They source granola from Jeff’s Granola in Holyoke, receive produce from farms in Hadley, get frozen blueberries from Maine and work closely with the Franklin County Food Processing Center to get seasonal vegetables grown in the Pioneer Valley, said Getman-Skillicorn.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Getman-Skillicorn said that they started offering emergency grab-and-go meals the Monday after Springfield Public Schools shut down in March 2020.

“Food service was open and serving emergency grab and go meals the Monday after the weekend. Food service effectively never closed down,” she said.

They started with 12 different grab-and-go locations, which then rose to 23 during the winter months. Getman-Skillicorn said that they saw more people in need of food during the pandemic.

“Over the pandemic, we saw a larger number that were coming to the open sites. We were serving easily 3,000 to 4,000 kids a week,” she said.

Home Grown Springfield also provides meals to kids during the summer months. They work with summer camps, the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA and housing authorities.

Getman-Skillicorn said that Home Grown Springfield helps alleviate some of the stress parents may have about meals. They know that their child will always be provided a nutritious meal in school and they have community support to make sure they are nourished, growing and learning on a full stomach.

“I think all of us do better when we have the nutrition that we need to live a healthy and active lifestyle,” she said.

Home Grown Springfield posts their menus for every school each week. Those interested in learning more or viewing menus are encouraged to visit their website at https://www.homegrownspringfield.org/.