On Friday afternoon in the Braddock Elementary School cafeteria, Reva Smith looked on as dozens of students swarmed toward the line to get a slice of pizza.
Fridays are pizza days on the Annandale, Virginia, campus, but Smith, the cafeteria manager, made sure to motivate students to explore the salad bar, too. There, the options include tomatoes, cucumbers and apple slices.
Every school in Virginia’s largest district now has a salad bar, a step Fairfax County tried to take before the pandemic but then paused as the coronavirus spread. And with the help of Shaun Sawko, the county’s new executive director of food and nutrition services who has also worked in D.C. and Montgomery County schools, the school system is redefining how school lunches look and taste.
“We all had school lunch and sometimes it gets a little boring … corn dogs and pizza and chicken tenders,” said Smith, who’s been at Braddock for about a year.
But three months into the job, Sawko has already moved away from the food items Smith described as boring. Superintendent Michelle Reid tasked Sawko and his team with increasing made-from-scratch cooking.
This fall, Fairfax County has introduced 12 made-from-scratch items, such as fajitas, which Sawko said was an easy step to take because peppers are already on the salad bar and the county has other ingredients such as lettuce and onions.
The school system also rolled out chicken parmesan sandwiches, which have basil on top and use low-sodium marinara sauce and low-fat mozzarella cheese. Crafting each dish, though, involves careful scrutiny of possible ingredients.
“School lunch is the most regulated program that you will ever have,” Sawko said. “When it comes to food services, we have to have certain calories that we have to meet, we have to ensure certain nutrition standards.”
Students also enjoy the tacos and enchiladas, Smith said, and many like the salad bar, too. She attributes part of the demand to the fact students can enjoy as much salad as they want, “so if they finished their entrée, and they’re still hungry, they know they can always come back and get (the) salad bar,” she said.
The school system will use the event to create a bank of recipes that it can start to feature in cafeterias.
“We don’t want adults like myself dictating what the students should be eating, the students should really be having that elevated voice,” Sawko said.
Just days into the job, Sawko said he started reviewing some of the things the county orders and was able to remove some prepackaged items from the list. Some of those items were “individually wrapped and utilize a lot of single-use plastics,” he said.
And, he said, the food and nutrition services department leads the district in workman’s compensation, largely because of “slip and falls.” So, the county is investing in new shoes for staff.
“We want to make sure that we’re not only just providing that support to our staff, but our staff are also in a safe, secure workplace as well,” Sawko said.
As some Braddock students approached the cash register Friday, they also had the choice to buy a sweet or salty snack. Pizza is on the menu every Friday, and while Sawko is considering changing the frequency at which it’s offered, he’s not planning to remove it from the new menus entirely.
“I don’t think I will be the director that’s going to be removing pizza from kids,” Sawko said.
