DRISCOLL: One starting place is to conduct a food waste audit, potentially using “The Guide to Conducting Student Food Waste Audits” provided collectively by the USDA, EPA, and University of Arkansas. The audit can include student volunteers in conjunction with cafeteria staff and Chartwells management. (Chartwells is the company that provides food service for the Melrose Public Schools.) The step-by-step guide provides information on everything from why it’s important to do this, making a plan, and performing the audit. Results would provide data that can be used to make any necessary updates that reduce waste. The guide also provides “food waste prevention ideas,” which can be reviewed and implemented depending on what the data show, and what is permissible and manageable in the facility and by the staff.

Separately, the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) includes the Office for School and Nutrition Programs, which oversees all feeding programs for districts around the Commonwealth. They set standards, align best practices, issue grants, perform school and nutrition audits, and provide training, in many cases in conjunction with the J.C. Stalker Institute of Food and Nutrition at Framingham State University and others with the Student Nutrition Association of Massachusetts (SNA). The Office is a wealth of knowledge for districts and staff and can be accessed to support consistent improvement in all areas of feeding and nutrition.

Lastly, in this area and all areas of sustainability, waste reduction, and health and nutrition, policy of the Melrose Public Schools can be explored to encourage evolution in our programming (for example, Policy ADF: Wellness, which references a healthy environment and nutritious school meals).

HARTMAN: We always need to look for ways to reduce all our waste. We should start by considering all the ways we are creating food waste. Are we disposing of unserved food? Are we seeing kids dispose of whole or significantly uneaten meals? Are we seeing kids dispose of food brought from home when they eat food provided by our kitchens? Are some schools disposing of more food waste than others?

We need to start answering these questions by getting information about what we are disposing of and where.

One of my top concerns when it comes to food in the schools is food quality. High-quality food can lead to kids being more satisfied with choices and less food waste as a result. Making food that kids really want to eat, and that is healthy, doesn’t mean we have to spend more money.

Also, with the establishment of free meals for all kids, families may not know that their kids are getting meals while also sending in meals of their own. Our communications should be clear on the meals that are available, and we should pilot some ways to communicate back to families so that families know the right amount [of food] to send in.

Finally, we should work to expand composting, and that is more thoroughly discussed in the answers below.

KELLEY: This is a very interesting question now that the state provides free meals for all kids. I would be interested in figuring out how this very important activity could increase food waste and how to prevent that. For example, my daughter told me that if she doesn't like the hot meal, she can get one of the alternatives. Knowing her, that would cause the waste of one full meal plus part of the alternative meal.

Another consideration is the type of snacks consumed in the schools and whether the packages are easily recycled or compostable (if we had that at all schools).

There are a lot of resources out there to assist schools, so I think it would come down to how do we, as a community, prioritize reducing food waste in the schools. This effort would require the school committee (policy setting, paying for it), the administration, teachers, parents, the DPW, and kids to be actively involved. One immediate way to do this would be to form a task force to create a plan to reduce waste with representatives from the stakeholders above.

TRZEPACZ: I approach this challenge from two angles — data-driven and practical. On the data side, we need to understand what are the types of food that are being wasted and feed that information back into the cafeteria so they can adjust portion sizes and/or what is being served. On the practical side, we need to marry this information with why kids are not finishing the food that they’ve been served. Is this because they don’t like it or because they do not have enough time to eat it? The latter would indicate that we need to assess how to speed up serving and/or extend lunch periods to allow kids enough time to eat. Extending lunch periods may or may not be feasible, but I would be open to reviewing this to see if we can shift free time around within the day. I’d also like to learn what other districts are doing in this space since some schools have likely made progress here. We should learn from them and adopt where it makes sense.

DRISCOLL: Importantly, the School Committee doesn’t have authority over or signing privileges on vendor contracts; that work is done by the administration in alignment with procurement laws and regulations in MA Chapter 30b. Currently, the administration works very closely with its long-time food service vendor, Chartwells (referenced above), on all things child nutrition, and the committee receives periodic reports on the financial management of the program. Again, I’d refer to results from an audit along with recommendations provided by DESE to apply best practices for Massachusetts and the district. I’d also encourage the district to apply for grants that target specific needs, within our leadership team’s ability to manage the grant (with grants being time-consuming and often onerous to account for and execute).

Related Topic (MA ban on non-emergency purchases of single-use plastic bottles by state agencies):

First, I’d explore the extent to which single-use bottles are currently sold in the district and understand why. If they are and there is no strong reason why, then yes, I support a ban on purchasing single-use plastic bottles as long as water filling stations are available and operational for students to bring their own reusable containers and access is equitable for all students. The best way to reduce disposables (ultimately and, in this case, plastic) is to remove the availability of the plastic. Separately, we’d need to support conversations with parents and students around bringing single-use plastic bottles into schools from home so the district reduces the need to manage plastic waste.

HARTMAN: Sustainable packaging, energy use reductions, and reductions in food waste are all things we could address with our vendors and our practices.

When examining contracting with vendors, we should have policies in place that ask vendors to show their environmental footprint, especially when it comes to packaging. Often, vendors don’t evaluate this as they don’t have to deal with the packaging waste, only the delivery of the goods. We should also partner with other districts in the area to have the same type of sustainable policies in place so that vendors that serve multiple districts with the same goods can start to find economies of scale to reduce their environmental impact while also not increasing costs.

We should ensure that we are accessing the most efficient energy forms for our energy needs and evaluate ways we can update our buildings to reduce energy use and even produce energy on-site. Melrose has benefited from environmental initiatives that come directly from power producers, and the same types of partnerships should be pursued in our school buildings. In any future building updates, we should pursue incentives and partners that would assist with placing energy production on-site and reducing energy use in updated facilities.

Related Topic (MA ban on non-emergency purchases of single-use plastic bottles by state agencies):

Single-use plastic is certainly something we should work to eliminate in our environment. I’m not fully familiar with the use of plastic bottles in the schools above elementary, but we should be able to use alternatives to single-use bottles. While vendors may want to only supply bottles for cafeteria use at the higher levels or in vending machines, there is no reason that fountain machines and can machines couldn’t be the alternative for drinks. We should also examine how we can get students to focus on reusable bottles and filling stations throughout the schools.

Vending at events should also be considered. Each year at the annual cleanup event, the largest amount of waste I pick up around central campus is from plastic bottles. We need to raise this issue with vending groups like the PTOs and Booster clubs and work with them on alternatives that still allow them to continue to raise money through event sales while avoiding the use of single-use plastic.

KELLEY: Let me first start with the governor's ban on plastic bottles purchased by state agencies. I totally support this. In fact, a few days after she made her announcement, my state agency had our first all-staff, in-person event post-COVID. My office manager returned the water bottles she purchased for our lunch and bought paper water bottles. We were able to easily adapt, and I think the schools can, too. Additionally, I think we should all strive to use multiuse water bottles whenever we can.

We can use the Melrose Public Schools' purchasing power to improve sustainability by writing sustainability requirements/metrics into any RFRs/contracts we issue. In public policy, it's common to say, "What gets measured gets done." This would likely fall under the powers of the superintendent of schools, so, as a school committee, we could enact guidelines through policy to strongly push sustainable purchasing. As a new school committee member, I would look to see what other districts are doing and any guidance the state provides, but also anything that Zero Waste Melrose could provide us after the election.

TRZEPACZ: Having worked in purchasing for much of my career, I want to understand our current contract and our costs relative to other districts. If appropriate, I want us to collaborate with surrounding districts to maximize our purchasing power and reduce our costs. I think this is important because sustainable options may cost more. By optimizing our costs, we can recycle those savings into more sustainable options. Additionally, we should look at the items we are serving today and reduce or eliminate those with excessive packaging. In preparing my response to this question, I learned that we serve pre-sliced apples in plastic packaging. This needs to stop. I think this is an excellent use case for our students (environmental club, student government, or similar) to learn how to understand a real-world problem and understand the costs of solutions, the trade-offs, and make proposals that the School District can act on.

Related Topic (MA ban on non-emergency purchases of single-use plastic bottles by state agencies):

Yes, but before implementing this, we need to understand the volume we are currently purchasing and the behavior that is causing us to want single-use bottles in the first place. I’ve noticed the recent introduction of aluminum single-use water bottles in fast-casual restaurants and workplace cafeterias. While this is good on some levels, since aluminum is more likely to be recycled, many of these bottles still end up in the trash. We risk that we simply shift from one material to the other. Since our goal is to ultimately eliminate waste in the first place, it’s important to make sure we have a clear understanding of the root cause(s). We may be able to address some in the schools directly, e.g., maybe we need more water filling stations, but others may be best accomplished by collaborating with the City’s Sustainability Department and Zero Waste Melrose on things like messaging and identifying ways to model the target behavior.

DRISCOLL: I support student-developed and school-approved programming in the schools that are within the district’s capacity to oversee. Student voice and choice are critically important to ensuring that schools have a culture of acceptance of all ideas that meet laws and regulations, and needs and interests. Expansion of composting depends on volunteer participation in conjunction with staff, so a recruitment effort might be needed for adults if they are invited to participate, and PTOs, site councils, and/or The Bridge could help. If a teacher were provided a stipend to assist, that would be a budgetary issue and of concern. Students care very much about this issue, and different schools have different opportunities for leadership in this area. It could also be the product of civic action in various classrooms throughout the district. Lastly, it’s important that the Melrose Health and Human Services Department oversee the following of safe and sanitary practices.

HARTMAN: I would support expansion of this program across all the levels. During the summer, my family often spends time at Mass Audubon facilities that pride themselves on composting. Since a young age, it has been easy for my children to follow directions and not mix up foods or waste.

My first question would be focused on DPW support and the impact of their role in the schools in waste removal. It would be important that cleaning staff are brought along in this process to ensure that extra burden doesn’t fall on them, and they can offer suggestions based on their experience with waste and clean up in the schools.

I would start with student groups at the middle school who may already be involved in this kind of work. For the program to be successful for this age group and above, student involvement is critical. I would also look to connect teachers interested in helping with the program as volunteers.

At the elementary level, I don’t think this will be a challenging event to integrate for the kids. It will mean some adjustment for some kids, but they will pick it up quickly. At the Roosevelt School, where my kids are, the older kids already help the younger kids at lunchtime, and this will go a long way to easily implementing a composting program. Kids teaching kids is the best model for success and the least impactful for teachers and staff at the schools.

KELLEY: Yes! We should absolutely figure out how to do this. I would support bringing this to the middle school, and I was happy to see that some middle schoolers suggested this to the school committee. Kids can be our partners in this. As a parent, I know that kids can adapt, so it's possible that we could even do this in the elementary schools because starting the habit early would lead to long-term success.

TRZEPACZ: Yes, but I would like to understand if we first have an option to leverage a citywide composting effort so we are less reliant on volunteers. I want to understand if we can loop composting into the existing pickup for trash and recycling, so this becomes one process to take out the trash, recycling, and compost, rather than two processes that require one for the trash and recycling, with a second one that is reliant on volunteers that may not always be available when needed. This would be my first preference, so we can sustain this in the long term.

If that’s not feasible, then I would support school-by-school deployment with a combination of volunteering and structured support. On the structural side, the school/DPW should support with the right compost bins and by taking the food waste to the compost pile each day. I’d also look for us to engage the City’s Sustainability Department and Zero Waste Melrose to help with the training materials for our students. On the volunteer side, we need a small club or group of volunteers to maintain the compost piles or bins and make sure the compost gets turned. Personally, I have a compost bin made from wood pallets. It’s not a lot of work to turn the compost or maintain the pallets, but it does need some regular TLC to keep going and, despite my best efforts, pull out the fruit PLU stickers! Therefore, we need to build the support to keep this going.

DRISCOLL: It’s important to determine whether this should be a school-based program or a city-based program to which the schools could contribute. The schools can’t manage every initiative that the community feels is important, and we must stay focused on our key mission in order to target resources within a limited budget. Once it’s determined who might manage a program like this, it would be important to explore why the TerraCycle initiative was not renewed and why the Roosevelt initiative ceased. A program manager could then determine how to re-imagine or up-level a program that accomplishes its goals. At any time, individual schools could set up and manage their own programs as capacity and interest allow, and that is considered safe and sanitary by the Melrose Health and Human Services Department.

HARTMAN: Yes, I would. I’m not familiar with the old program, but I would look to community leaders like Zero Waste Melrose to help get it up and running. I would ask that ZWM bring information to our PTOs and begin to source volunteers from the already active networks that exist there. This program sounds like a good fit for the schools if it doesn’t add to the staff’s workload and can help us reduce landfill or incineration waste.

KELLEY: I would like to understand why this wasn't renewed after COVID and figure out how to relaunch it in a safe way across the district.

TRZEPACZ: Yes. As a starting point, we should take all of the help we can get from parents to support and reduce our waste. In terms of expansion, we should try the volunteer route via the school site councils or similar as a first pass to try and expand this quickly. Every bit helps. More broadly, I think we need to consider our overall school sustainability and have an underpinned plan, owners for actions, and make this part of the normal way we work as a school. I believe this is key to lock in our progress and prevent backsliding.