The problem:

Imagine waking up late, rushing to work, engaging with peers and focusing on critical tasks for several hours, then sitting down for your first meal of the day at 11:30. For me, that means turning into a delirious crank with no ability to focus on work, then gorging on calorically-dense junk, followed immediately by the desperate need for a cat nap.

Imagine that same experience if you’re a Boston schools student-- arriving just in time to meet the morning bell, without having eaten, and trying to focus and learn while your stomach growls incessantly, only to then race to the cafeteria and be faced by the reality of school lunch!

In the Boston Public Schools, food insecurity and access to healthy food is a serious issue for many students.  It may be hard to imagine, but public school food is often the most nutritious food they get all week.  

In 2013, Boston Public Schools (BPS) joined the Community Eligibility Option, a federal program that allows BPS to offer breakfast, lunch and an after school meal for free to every BPS student. Taking cost and eligibility verification out of the equation remove huge barriers: before the program started, 78% of BPS’  57,000 students qualified for free or reduced lunch and another significant chunk were just over the income cut-off. However, participation in the program did not match up with eligibility due to a variety of reasons including parents who were unable to understand or were not even aware of the enrollment process, and students who feared the stigma of appearing poor.  By providing free meals to all BPS students, there is no longer any stigma to getting free food in school.  However, there is still the barrier of making the food both delicious and nutritious, as well as convenient to eat.  Many students say they like having a salad bar in school, except that the school lunch period doesn’t give them enough time to eat!

For breakfast, many kids relying on public transit to get to school often arrive too late for the cafeteria meal.  In response, many schools have started offering “breakfast in the classroom” a grab-n-go option to get food to the kids.  However, the current offerings for breakfast are neither good-tasting nor healthy.

It was surprising to learn that the BPS food and nutrition services struggled to find a simple breakfast offering-- like  a muffin- that was high in fiber and low in sugar while also being tasty.  That’s where I came in.

The players:

Third Cliff Bakery: Third Cliff Bakery is owned by me, Meg Crowley. I’m a baker with a mission to bring simple, delicious baked goods to the world.  I started by company two years ago working out of CommonWealth Kitchen’s food business incubator in Dorchester.  

CommonWealth Kitchen: CommonWealth Kitchen is a food business incubator and small batch manufacturing social enterprise, shifting the Boston food scene to create more just and equitable local food economy. Their mission, location, and innovative culture makes them a prime partner in helping make the connections to bring delicious, healthy food to the Boston Public Schools

Boston Public Schools: Laura Benavidez, Deb Ventricelli, Jaclyn Youngblood and the entire Food and Nutrition team at the Boston Public Schools are on a mission to improve school food, provide equity across the district, and increase student participation in the meal programs as a way to boost student performance and health.  

Mass. Farm to School:  Simca Horwitz has played a matchmaking role, identifying the problem of school breakfast, and connecting dots between the BPS and CWK staff and serving as an advocate and cheerleader for the collaboration.   

The Solution and Steps Forward:

Breakfast is critical to the executive functions that allow me to go through the morning alert, engaged and curious. Having grown up in a food-secure and healthy-minded household, I arrived school each morning with a belly full of fuel. In my adult life, I recognize the importance of that fuel and appreciate my parents’ insistence on “real” breakfast before school, and that appreciation fuels Third Cliff Bakery’s drive to be involved in the solution: the Mighty Muffin.

The Mighty Muffin grew out of a request from Boston Public Schools to CommonWealth Kitchen for delicious and locally-sourced muffins that met their health requirements. CWK brought Third Cliff into the conversation just as I finished developing muffins to offer at Fresh Food Generation (a co-CWK entrepreneur)’s cafe in Dorchester House Health Center in Field’s Corner. There could not have been better timing to extend the idea to the Boston Public Schools.

This Mighty Muffin recipe was developed: it is delicious and contains whole wheat and fruits or veggies and is low in sugar and salt. After tasting extensively with friends at CWK, partners at the BPS Nutrition and Food offices and parents, community members and food professionals at the BPS Food Advisory Committee, we are ready to get feedback from the folks who will actually eat the results: BPS students.

We’ll kick off pilot testing in the next two weeks to solicit student feedback on the

flavor (Does it taste good? What else would they like to taste?),

texture (Is the visible zucchini a turn-off? How is the crumb?) and

presentation (What should we name each one?).

My ultimate goal is to create a product that is nutritious and a good fuel for learning, while also being delicious and a demonstration to BPS students of a baked good that is a smart food choice.

Common good. Common Purpose. CommonWealth.

Indeed.