The Health Promotion Center at Glens Falls Hospital and area school districts are trying to increase their farm-to-school efforts and agricultural learning in the classroom.
Local school districts have partnered with the center. The goal is to further promote health and wellness for district students, faculty, staff, and community.
Officials said the districts benefit from the support of Creating Healthy Schools and Communities (CHSC), a state Department of Health grant secured by Glens Falls Hospital. The CHSC initiative strives to increase physical activity and access to healthy foods in our communities and schools, whether this be through school districts, early childcare centers, work sites, or community settings.
The Health Promotion Center of Glens Falls Hospital works to improve the health and well-being of the people and communities in the region. Its work focuses on strategies to make it easier for people to eat well, be tobacco-free, be physically active, and obtain preventative care.
This work is currently supported through numerous grant-funded initiatives housed within the Health Promotion Center, including Creating Healthy Schools and Communities, Health Systems for a Tobacco-Free NY, and Cancer Prevention in Action programs.
Schools in Warren and Washington counties have gravitated toward indoor growing systems, which can be incorporated into the classroom and school year schedule. Classrooms from preschool to grade 12—including science, home and careers, and special education classes—have integrated gardens, allowing teachers to utilize them for several topic areas and lessons.
Presently Granville, Whitehall, Johnsburg, and North Warren school districts have indoor growing capacity. Classrooms are growing produce such as microgreens, parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, chili peppers, and arugula. Officials said they have provided their harvests to the school cafeteria to be used in their schools’ meal programs, classroom taste testing, and meals cooked by the Family and Consumer Science class.
The Adirondack Folk School (AFS) in Lake Luzerne, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and preserves the cultural history of the Adirondacks and promotes creativity and self-reliance by teaching the arts, crafts and traditions, has hired Terri Cerveny as executive director.