Chef Maraiah Popeleski-Tilley, Food Services Director for the Mansfield Public School and Edwin O. Smith High School, has been awarded a Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship from the Chef Ann Foundation, headquartered in California. Chef Popeleski-Tilley is one of 24 food service professionals selected to participate in this year-long opportunity, including only three professionals representing New England.
According to the Chef Ann Foundation, The Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship was designed for experienced school food professionals who are committed to driving healthy, sustainable, and equitable school food reform. In school districts across the U.S., visionary school food professionals are working hard to make their meal programs healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable. The Foundation believes that school food professionals play a critical role in shaping children’s health, and their eating habits later in life. This fellowship program helps experienced school food professionals realize their visions for change — both locally in their home districts and at a national scale.
Chef Popeleski-Tilley joined Mansfield Public Schools in fall of 2022, and has worked to transform the school lunch program here. Along with her staff, she incorporates scratch cooking into the daily menus at Mansfield Elementary School, Mansfield Middle School, and Edwin O. Smith High School (Regional School District 19) serving approximately 4,000 lunch meals each school week. Free “grab-and-go” breakfast bags are also provided to all students. She is also a proponent of locally grown foods as part of the menu whenever possible, and is active in the Town’s Taste of Mansfield initiative to help build the community through local food. Her philosophy is “No Sad Lunches,” as she encourages staff to ensure all students are provided a meal they can enjoy.
“I believe scratch cooking in school nutrition programs is important because we are providing kids the fuel to learn and grow,” says Chef Popeleski-Tilley. “The food we serve should be good quality, tasty and help every child to develop a positive relationship with food. Scratch-cooked recipes can be more culturally diverse and showcase a variety of ingredients often not found in manufactured foods. Scratch cooking improves equity as it helps give all children an opportunity to enjoy a home-cooked style meal, no matter their family’s economic status or family make up,” she adds.
To improve the food programs, Chef Maraiah has provided training and growth opportunities for her food service staff and teachers. She has invited local farmers to lunch waves so students can meet them and try new locally grown vegetables, and she decorates the cafeteria spaces to introduce positive messaging around food. Working with the Town’s Recycling Coordinator, school staff packages any unserved food to be transported by volunteers each day to the local soup kitchen in nearby Windham to minimize waste. Chef Popeleski-Tilley is also active with food systems issues on the state level, incorporating University of Connecticut’s Extension program resources like the Put Local on Your Tray initiative. Learn more about Chef Maraiah’s philosophy of serving students in this video: https://youtu.be/QxQvPmZISRo
According to the Chef Ann Foundation’s website, over a 13-month period, Chef Popeleski-Tilley and the other fellows will cultivate their leadership skills, and deepen their knowledge about how school food is influenced by and affects the wider U.S. food system. Each Fellow will also design and execute a unique “capstone” project that benefits their home school district and that can become a model for other districts. These projects might approach local food procurement, introducing culturally relevant items, or transitioning to more scratch-cooked meals. These professionals work to become experts on and advocates for healthy school food policy, and expand their professional network.
The Fellowship is open to school food professionals across the country with support from the program’s founding partners Whole Kids and the State of California. The Chef Ann Foundation is dedicated to promoting whole-ingredient, scratch cooking in schools. This approach enables schools to serve the healthiest, tastiest meals so that kids are well fed and ready to learn. Learn more at https://www.chefannfoundation.org/