What do some Baltimore middle school students have to do with the pesto being served in Goucher College’s dining hall? A lot, actually. The college recently bought 80 pounds of basil grown by students of Green Street Academy, a public Baltimore City middle-high school that opened in 2010 to highlight skills in sustainability and connect students to the green economy.
The basil purchase kicked off a partnership between the two educational institutions, which share similar goals for local, sustainable produce. Norman Zwagil, resident district manager of Goucher’s food services provider Bon Appétit Management Company, said the exchange benefits both parties: Goucher receives organic produce, and the academy gains an enthusiastic buyer. In fact, Goucher College has now become one of the three main buyers working with Green Street Academy.
Since Green Street Academy opened, the farming side of the educational operation has been a learning process for the students, who start with growing “easier” produce such as lettuce and beans. The students, called scholars at the school, drive the process and learn as they go along. “We’re just advisers; we’re here to facilitate,” said Denisha Logan, an academy teacher who runs a supplemental summer program at the school.
Now the students harvest food from the academy’s 150-foot hoop farm, a type of passive solar greenhouse that allows for nonstop planting and harvesting throughout the year, as well as from its on-site tilapia farm.
In additional to the original basil purchase, lettuce was served to Goucher students their first night back on campus, and in September their plates will be filled with Russian kale and Red Fire lettuce — all grown 15 miles down the Beltway. In the future, Goucher may even be able to choose what the academy grows for its dining halls, including heirloom vegetables. A henhouse on school property is already populated by chickens diligently laying brown eggs, and talks are in the works about acquiring goats.
“This is really just taking root,” Zwagil recently said on a tour of the school while standing in the basement as hundreds of tilapia splashed wildly during their feeding time. On nearby chalkboards, equations and measurements were scrawled by young hands to determine fish weight and how much food was required to get them to a certain goal for later in the year.
“It’s a great connection of math and science,” said Lawrence Rivitz, the co-founder and president of Green Street Academy. He said the whole idea of the school is for students to learn hands on, from figuring out how much feed the fish need, how to nurture the plants, and how to negotiate with buyers such as Goucher.
Goucher leadership has been impressed with the academy’s operation and products. “This is exactly the kind of ‘green’ partnership with the city schools that Goucher College, given our Baltimore roots, is trying to promote and nurture,” said Wendy Belzer Litzke, vice president for government and community relations and co-chair of the Goucher Environmental Sustainability Environmental Council.
For more information on the Green Street Academy, visit its webpage, and for more information on Bon Appétit and its food-buying practices, visit here.