Kids growing food at school

Jill Severn

The Tumwater School District is facing a painful budget crisis, and the school district’s student farming program, called FRESH, may fall under the budget axe.  

FRESH started nine years ago as a dropout prevention program to help struggling students to stay in school, learn how to grow food for their community, work in teams, and build confidence in themselves. Students earn credits in science, civics and social studies. 

But in today’s world, FRESH addresses two bigger problems as well: It teaches skills that will help students understand climate change’s impact on a food system more vulnerable with every passing year to drought, fire, and floods. And FRESH’s emphasis on teamwork and acceptance of differences teaches skills critical to the practice of democracy. This is education for the 21st century.  

But of course, FRESH’s focus on helping struggling students graduate is essential too. It has been transformational for students like Kaeonna Finnegan. Here’s some of a recent speech she gave at a Tumwater School Board meeting: 

“FRESH shows kids they have a voice ... Instructors are teaching kids how to become young adults and how to become better people. Some of these kids come from disadvantaged and broken homes and are products of bad relationships.

“Before I joined FRESH I was going down the path of using drugs ... I was failing multiple classes, thinking I would never even graduate high school when my entire life I always knew I wanted to because I’d be the first person in my family to do so ... Now I’m now going to be graduating a whole year early.

“I've gained the confidence that I never knew was a thing helping me make friends, but also leaving people I know who wouldn't be good for me in the long run.” 

And here’s a sampling of what Esra Fife, one of the program’s two teachers, told the school board: 

“FRESH teaches the students how to plan a garden, how to take care of the soil, how to tend the plants  — but more important, how to take care of each other.

“I had the honor of working alongside students as they harvested crops to share with their neighbors in the FRESH market stand ... One week we harvested 50 pounds of cucumbers.” 

Also, Fife said, “this program provides our youth with the building blocks for the compassion and collaboration we so desperately need right now.” 

The program also has ripple effects in the community even beyond its contributions to the food bank and its vegetable and plant sales.

At a meeting of students to prepare for a coming school board meeting, a supportive neighbor showed up, not only because she cared about the students, but because she worried about the future of Isabella Bush Park, where its small farm fields are located.

Before FRESH, the neighbor said, the mostly unused park had been a trouble spot with squatters, partiers and the like. She supports FRESH because it’s been a benefit to the park and the surrounding neighbors. 

(Sadly, the school board meeting was canceled because of a predicted storm.) 

FRESH started as a partnership between the school district, the City of Tumwater and Garden Raised Bounty (aka GRuB), and it has won grant funding from the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office. Its classroom is an old dairy barn surrounded by the farm’s fields and the park’s wetlands and trees. That classroom is big enough for more students. 

The lead teacher, Kristen Maring, is very good at her job. She makes sure students earn those credits in science, civics and social studies.

But plants are also powerful teachers. Preparing the soil, planting seeds, and tending young vegetables connects students to our own species’ roots. Watching plants grow is a life lesson in patience, and the harvest is a source of wonder and joy. The experience grounds students in the natural world we are a part of, and cultivates their responsibility for stewardship.  

All students need this is body of skills and knowledge. To grow up without learning all that is an educational failure, especially as our world faces existential challenges to a livable climate and to our capacity to govern ourselves. 

There are no statewide learning requirements or standardized tests that measure this knowledge. And there is certainly no state or federal funding dedicated to it.  

The Tumwater School District is not alone in facing deep financial problems that require making cuts no one wants to make. But the district and its students have a strong partner in the City of Tumwater, strong allies in the local farm, garden and conservation community, and, we hope, the strong support of citizens who want to grow confident, fully educated adults ready to take on responsibility for our shared future. 

Strengthening these partnerships and recruiting more of them may be the best way forward — and the way forward should aim not just to save FRESH, but to expand it. In the long term, we should all hope for the day programs like it to become a state-funded part of basic education for all students. 

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com