RE Log Spring 2022

The year was 2005 – half a decade before Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign would push childhood obesity into public consciousness. Vegan restaurants were few and far between; the age of the wellness influencer was not even close to beginning. But change was happening in that small, 18-student classroom in Lenox Hill, and the source of that change was Nancy Easton ’84 , a self-described “crazy parent” who had dared to ask whether her school was doing enough to provide nutrition to the children under its care. Now, Easton’s nonprofit, Wellness in the Schools (WITS), is a juggernaut, serving 172 schools and more than 85,000 children nationwide – including Ransom Everglades School, a brand- new partner looking to take a fresh approach to student meals and nutrition. Inspired by and modeled on that original relationship with the Ella Baker School, the organization works with schools in several ways to improve the quality of their food offerings and nutrition education. Sometimes Wellness in the Schools will send professional chefs to schools to conduct hands-on cooking classes with students. Sometimes, WITS will give cafeteria chefs the opportunity to learn new techniques with restaurant chefs. Sometimes it will work with school administrations to develop nutrition curricula. “We’ll break up the academic day with things like showing how much sugar is in a typical drink, or showing how much fat is in a typical fast food meal by putting Crisco between two buns and measuring that out. It gets really visual,” Easton said. More often than not, the organization will do some combination of all of the above, in addition to helping schools with fitness and anti-bullying programming. Since its inception, Wellness in the Schools has catalyzed the transformation of some of the biggest and most logistically complex school systems in the nation, including the New York City Department of Education and D.C. Public Schools. For the NYC DOE, a system that oversees around 1,700 kitchens that serve some 1.1 million children per day, with many of them getting their only significant nutrition from school, the partnership has been instrumental in improving the quality of food offerings and giving kitchen workers opportunities for professional development. “We’ve really had an opportunity to train our cooks and give them a sense that this isn’t just about lining up food and putting it out there for kids. It’s really a culinary, SPRING 2022 Ransom Everglades LOG 7 Photos by Suzanne Kores