Sacramento Unified Schools Give Green Light to 2.5-acre Learning Garden, Kitchen

January 24, 2016 |

On Thursday night the Sacramento Unified School District gave the green light to the Food Literacy Center's new "Broccoli Headquarters" program.

The program will permit the FLC to operate a 2.5-acre urban farm on the Leataata Floyd Elementary School campus in the Northwest Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento. The plan includes establishing a “Broccoli Headquarters” dedicated to educating the youth of Sacramento on the importance of healthy cooking and eating.

The new location is instrumental in allowing FLC's to expand upon its mission to inspire kids to eat their vegetables and improve the health of the community. For the first time ever Food Literacy Center will serve high school students in addition to elementary school students and daytime education will be added to the curriculum.

“Having a well-established food literacy program like Food Literacy Center is critical to the success of the Leataata Floyd Farms Project,” added Jay Hansen, Sacramento Unified School District board member. “Amber and her team have built a strong, academically challenging curriculum and with the added resources of a farm and access to students throughout the day more of our students can benefit from this outstanding program.”

In addition to the students of the Sacramento Unified School District, the greater Sacramento community and region will also have access to the new facility and its resources through food literacy programming such as cooking classes and garden education.

The new site will include indoor teaching kitchens and a production agriculture parcel with the goal of providing food for the elementary school cafeteria. Students will receive food literacy curriculum including hands-on, inquiry-based classes that are tied to academic standards, including cooking and nutrition classes such as the chemistry of cooking, history/culture through cuisine and food science.

Additionally, the students will receive garden/farm curriculum including hands-on classes to learn the parts of a plant, the science of growing food, composting and insect biology. The garden and farm will include drought-tolerant and native edible plants and will be organic.

The Leataata Floyd Farms Project was approved for development in 2012 and is made possible because of the first ever collaboration between The Mill at Broadway, the City of Sacramento Parks and Recreation Department, and the Sacramento City Unified School District. The Mill at Broadway and the Setzer Family Foundation are each providing a $100,000 startup donation to seed the project.

“We were thrilled to be chosen to be a part of this project. It will allow us to move from being a solely after school program to serving 600 elementary and high school students during the day,” Amber Stott, Founder and Executive Director of Food Literacy Center said. “Food literacy education has shown to improve the health and overall academic performance of students. We feel that this curriculum is as important as reading and math, and should be incorporated into daytime education.”