PSD honored for Farm to School Excellence at 2018 Golden Radish Awards

Polk School District won silver level recognition at the 2018 Golden Radish Awards held at the Georgia Freight Depot. The Golden Radish Award publicly recognizes Georgia school districts for best practices in farm to school programs, such as local food procurement, exposing students to new foods through taste tests and incorporating gardening and cooking activities in curriculum.

Dr. Linda Holland, the PSD School Nutrition Director, said that she was joined at the ceremony by Greg Teems, Jeff Hawkins, Sue Cuzzort and Glynn Robinson for the ceremony.

“Also, Polk School District has met the 20/20 Vision serving 20 percent of our meals coming from Georgia grown sources,” she added.

Polk School District received kudos for their work:

Polk County Schools and Polk County Farm Bureau expanded the district’s STEM initiatives to include art (STEAM). Farm to school themed essay and art contests were popular with high school and middle school students.

School staff visited Lovells Farms to learn about farm to school, farm equipment, and farm production through hands-on activities.

Polk students tastetested fresh produce from the school gardens. Student favorites, such as fresh kale and steamed spinach, were sourced from local farmers and added to the lunch menu.

Polk School District was one of 84 Georgia School Districts recognized at the awards. Collectively, these districts served more than 1.3 million students a whopping 109 million school meals with locally grown food items during the 2017-18 school year!

This year, the Golden Radish partners (Georgia Organics, Georgia’s Departments of Agriculture (GDA), Education (GaDOE) and Public Health (GDPH), the Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) and University of Georgia Cooperative Extension (UGA Extension) awarded 17 new school districts and inaugurated five new Farm to School Innovation awards.