The overarching vision for New Brunswick Public Schools is to Prepare, Empower and Inspire lifelong learners and leaders. We aim to ensure that our students become engaged in their own learning, their environment, and the world. Students will develop their creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills to innovate solutions to complex challenges. We strive to provide every student the opportunity to graduate and pursue the career or higher educational experience of their choice.

New Brunswick is a vibrant community. While many know it primarily as a college town and home to Rutgers University, you’ll learn to love entirely new parts of our city through service. New Brunswick’s population is majority Latinx and Black, with residents from a great diversity of backgrounds that influence the foods we serve, grow, and learn about. New Brunswick is also located in the heart of New Jersey, equally distanced between New York and Philadelphia via NJ Transit’s Northeast Corridor, making our community an increasingly popular area to live and work. New Brunswick Public Schools is a vibrant, diverse school district located in one of New Jersey’s most historic communities – a thriving college town that has been home to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, for over 250 years. New Brunswick’s population is over 56,000, and its school district enrolls close to 10,000 students from preschool through grade 12. Reflecting the multicultural nature of the community, approximately two-thirds of the students speak one of 23 languages other than English at home. Demographically, 91 percent of them are Hispanic; another 7 percent are African-American. The overarching vision for New Brunswick Public Schools is to Prepare, Empower and Inspire lifelong learners and leaders. We aim to ensure that our students become engaged in their own learning, their environment, and the world.

3 School Nutrition service members will work with the New Brunswick Public Schools’ Food Service Management Company, Aramark, in implementing the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program across 3-6 elementary schools within the district, including creating culturally relevant menus, prioritizing local/Jersey-grown produce, preparing and delivering snacks, and leading lessons related to the fruits and vegetables being served. The service members will also perform the following duties:

• Support marketing and outreach initiatives related to the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program and create materials, newsletters and resources for students and teachers to utilize in classrooms, and for students to take home to share with their families about the benefits of fresh and local fruits and vegetables;
• Support schools in making connections between school gardens/indoor growing systems and school cafeterias, including working with students to plant, care for and harvest school-grown produce to be included in their school meal programs (breakfast and lunch), and working with teachers to incorporate garden and nutrition-based lessons into curriculum;
• Support the the Food Services Director and Aramark team across the district in creating and operationalizing a feedback system for students and families to share feedback about school meal programs with the Food Services Department to create a school meal program that is inclusive of New Brunswick’s multi-cultural population and prioritizes fresh and locally sourced meals.

Service members will also have the opportunity to lead curricularly-aligned hands-on lessons in classrooms and school gardens in collaboration with science and health teachers, conduct taste tests in classrooms and cafeterias that promote locally sourced produce and culturally relevant recipes, and promote a schoolwide culture of health by participating in family engagement activities and after-school events. One of the schools we serve, McKinley, has been designated the Environmental Science themed school in the district and already has multiple raised beds in addition to a large hoop house on the school’s property. Our service members will continue supporting and maintaining these spaces in partnership with school leadership at McKinley. Another school, Redshaw, also has a number of planter boxes. One of the highlights of the year for our service members (and for their students and teachers!) is leading the schoolwide “March Snackness” healthy snack competition, based off the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament – but with snacks!

Our 3 FoodCorps service members with the New Brunswick Public Schools are part of the New Jersey cohort, which includes 14 service members with 5 sites across 5 communities in New Jersey. Don’t be fooled by what you may have heard from the haters: New Jersey is a state with a heaping spoonful of love, a dash of attitude, and a heavy sprinkle of everything nature has to offer: gorgeous beaches along the Atlantic Ocean (AKA “the shore”), hiking opportunities from the Appalachian Trail in the north to the Pine Barrens in the south, flourishing urban spaces with every kind of cuisine and art form known to planet earth, and rolling farmland stretching for as far as the eye can see.

Situated between two major cities, New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey is aptly named the Garden State and home to nearly 10,000 urban and rural farms producing over 100 crops enjoyed nationwide! Connecting New Jersey kids to local agriculture reinforces our agricultural roots, economy, and unites communities with a shared vision of improving child health and wellbeing. Like New Jersey itself, our service sites reflect a broad diversity of culture and geography. Too many New Jersey residents experience health disparities as a result of decades of systemic racism, and service members mainly serve in communities with the highest rates of food insecurity. In partnership with our network of service sites, we strive to positively impact the ways New Jersey children experience food in school by using a variety of action-driven and scientifically-backed farm to school efforts including promoting local procurement and student voice and choice in cafeterias, leading hands-on lessons in classrooms and school gardens, and by supporting our community partners to foster the culture of health that’s right for them within each unique school building we serve across the state.

Our full New Jersey cohort meets regularly throughout the year for state-based trainings with local leaders, growers and organizers to set our service members up for success for their 1-2 years of service. During the first month of service, members research and present on the place-based histories and current context of the communities we serve; are introduced to a wide variety of food justice and farm to school stakeholders at the state and local levels; practice active learning by planning and leading culturally relevant classroom lessons, garden activities and taste tests with their fellow service members before entering their schools; spend ample time cooking and sharing meals together, learning from each other, and building community as a cohort (AKA “cohort bonding”), and orienting themselves at their sites throughout August prior to the first day of school in September, all of which is necessary to serve our communities intentionally, respectfully and from a Community Assets Based Approach. Additionally, our service members participate in a wide variety of national, state, and site-based professional development and networking opportunities throughout the year that are necessary for our New Jersey service members to advance in their chosen careers following their 1-2 years of service.