Lunch is served at the Village School Kitchen at the Village School in Eugene, Oregon, complete with roasted potatoes, kale and carrot salad, salad greens, cucumbers, a pear, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

By: Kiana Jardin

 

At the Village School, a public K-8 charter school in Eugene, Oregon, Toña Aguilar, co-founder of the Village School Kitchen, sits and waits as the classes line up for the freshly prepared meal of the day. Students fly through the lunch line, picking up mounds of salad greens, fresh vegetables, potatoes, and fruit. They walk over to Toña, where she praises them for their beautifully balanced plate creations or suggests that they go back and try something new to make the plate more vibrant.

Without the help of Toña and her vision of a better school food program, this healthy lunchtime feast would be a different picture.

When Toña’s daughter started kindergarten at the Village School nine years ago, the school was still a part of the Eugene 4J school district nutrition service program. Before her work at the Village School, Toña was a teacher at the Eugene Waldorf School and was part of a local group called the Eugene Coalition for Better School Food. From her observations of the food being served in the schools, she believed that it lacked many components of a healthy nutrition service program. She recalled frozen foods, food dyes, with few organic or local food choices.

Toña was worried about what her child would be eating. “As a parent, you’d love to just be able to send your child to school and know that the school provides a wholesome, nourishing meal, made with care every school day, and that wasn’t the case before.”

Because of budget cuts for charter schools within the school system, the Village School found out that they would not have a nutrition service program in place that coming year. Seeing a problem in the current food system and an opportunity arising to make a change, Toña, along with co-founder and parent Stacey Black, decided to step in and put together a business proposal for the school to start their own healthy school food program.

Today, Toña and other family volunteers from the school create nutritious and creative meal options for the children and staff to eat every day. Andy Peara, the executive director at the Village School, has worked with Toña for many years remarked at the many roles she holds in the Village School Community: “She is a coordinator for the kitchen and the Wellness Program.”

Toña plans to start a guest chef program where people from the international community cook, allowing the students to try cuisine from a completely different culture.

Toña loves to share her passion for food with the children and educates them about the importance of healthy eating: “Thinking about what they put in their body sets them up for a lifetime of healthy choices.”

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