Annual Conference
Conference Session
2014-11-14
"Social Justice, Food Justice, Education and the School Meal Program"Key Areas: Administration & Leadership Development
Session: Session B - Friday, November 14th, 2014: 9:15 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.
- 301
Speaker(s): Alexandra Emmott - Farm to School Supervisor , Oakland Unified School District
Christyna Serrano - PhD Candidate and Instructor , University of California Berkeley
Objectives: 1. Define "Social Justice" and "Food Justice" in the school meal context. 2. Understand the historical context of the National School Meal Program. How do agricultural and food policies affect our programs? What government agencies oversee these programs and why? 3. Explore the role of the school meal program in the American public education system. How do school meals fit into the social justice mission of education? 4. Introduce Oakland Unified School Distri's Full Service Community Schools mission and "Quality School Indicators" as tools for integrating and aligning Nutrition Services and Academic Services.
Description: Join us to learn about the complexities of the system within which we work. Learn about the history of the National School Meal Program, commodities, agricultural subsidies, and the government agencies that administer these programs. What role does the school meal program play in the American public education system and how can we align our work with broader social and food justice goals?
Speaker Bio(s):
Alexandra Emmott - Oakland Unified School District
Speaker Bio:
Alexandra (Alex) Emmott has worked for Oakland Unified School District as the Farm to School Supervisor since 2012, where she oversees the Oakland Fresh Produce Market Program and directs the department's purchasing of local and sustainable ingredients for the meal program. Prior to joining the Oakland team, Alex worked on federal grant administration and farm to school projects for Boston Public Schools. Alex has over a decade of experience in the food industry, and before transitioning to policy and school food, she owned and operated an award winning bakery and caf
Christyna Serrano - University of California Berkeley
Speaker Bio:
Christyna Serrano is a PhD student in the Graduate School of Education's Policy, Organizations, Measurement, and Evaluation (POME) program, at UC Berkeley. She is interested in social inequality and how schools are used as sites of intervention for the amelioration of structural inequality and the promotion of social justice. Christyna is currently working on her dissertation, which is a participant action ethnographic research study being conducted in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). Through this study she wants to examine the intersections between policy and practice within the processes and work of policy implementation. More specifically, she is examining federal policies and programs like the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the Farm Bill, and the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHKFA), and their implementation and impacts within OUSD, for the purposes of understanding the role that Nutrition Services plays in the social justice mission of education, and informing the construction of federal policies that can better support these efforts.
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