{"id":25563,"date":"2024-09-25T19:34:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T01:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-open-school-introduces-new-food-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:20:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:20:38","slug":"southwest-open-school-introduces-new-food-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-open-school-introduces-new-food-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Open School introduces new food program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southwest
Southwest Open School closed and canceled classes on Thursday.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Southwest Open School is working to hep solve the food insecurity seen on the school\u2019s campus, according to SWOS Director Casey Simpson.<\/p>\n

The idea for this initiative was created after Simpson said school leadership noticed that in the past they have had low school lunch participation. While Montezuma-Cortez High School students have three lunch options (grab-and-go salad, grab-and-go sandwich and a hot meal), SWOS\u2019 only option was a hot meal.<\/p>\n

To help combat the low participation, SWOS teamed up with Charter League, a state-level organization that helps charter schools acquire grant funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey supported us through grant funding in order to pioneer a school lunch program where a class at Southwest Open School got their food handler certifications and have started to make a grab-and-go salad and a grab-and-go lunch meat sandwich daily,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cSince we\u2019ve implemented it, our lunch participation has increased dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simpson said that the district\u2019s food service director, Sandy Van Houten, has been pivotal to this program\u2019s launch, and individuals from CDE came to do a walk-through of the campus\u2019s food areas and said they were \u201cgood to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s counselor, Danielle Clifton, is teaching the class where students are getting their food handler certification, and each day these students are making the school\u2019s lunches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it helps the students knowing that the food they\u2019re purchasing has been prepared by their peers,\u201d Van Houten said.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are often hungry on campus in the past, or for my 10-year tenure at SWOS, students have been directed to a counselor or the office or their teacher to grab a snack,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>\n

Now, to ensure all students have enough food to stay fueled throughout the day and make sure they don\u2019t have to hunt down snacks on campus, Simpson said they\u2019ve instituted two snack times during the day, one at 10 a.m. and one at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re embarking on a program to help teach kids, one, when to eat, and two, what to eat, in an effort to help them learn these skills that they may not get at home,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cAs adults, you can\u2019t just eat whatever you want. You have to kind of plan your day and eat meals, so we\u2019re working on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The snacks given to students are healthy snacks such as dried fruits and meats, cheeses, fresh fruits, sugar free snacks and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students are loving that,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cI think yesterday we handed out 90 snacks. We\u2019re collecting the data, and the data is showing that students are hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that snacks have been implemented, Simpson said they are seeing positive results in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers are reporting that classes are much less disrupted by food needs or hunger needs. Students are getting nutrition, and it\u2019s pretty exciting stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Simpson, there is very little grant funding to support food needs, and many federal grants can\u2019t be used for food.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating because we viscerally know that students have a hard time learning when they\u2019re hungry,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, Simpson said he hopes this food program helps improve attendance and student outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hope is that it will increase the safety and comfort of students at school which we hope is engaging and improves attendance. We hope that the students are getting a nutritious meal or meals on campus so that they are alert to learn while they are here,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cWe want the students to be less distracted by food in the classroom or distracted by the search for food on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

program is in its pilot year and has seen positive results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78995,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563\/revisions\/78995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25563"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}