Islip school food program wins $5,000 state award

Feta Cheddar salad, tomato bisque soup and soft tortilla shells filled with chopped turkey, mozzarella, garlic, celery and carrots are among the food choices available in Islip schools, dishes made from scratch using surplus ingredients from the Department of Agriculture.

At a time when school food service directors across Long Island and elsewhere face financial constraints in serving healthy and tasty meals to students, the Islip district has been recognized for finding creative ways to use government commodities available to schools for a minimal warehousing fee.

The state Office of General Services, which oversees the distribution of USDA commodities to school districts, announced yesterday that Islip and two upstate districts have been awarded $5,000 "best practices" awards.

The money must go toward funding the school food program, said Tom Osterhout, the office's director of food distribution and warehousing.

Osterhout noted that 70 percent of high school students in Islip eat school lunch, a rate he called "very, very high."

New York's first lady, Michelle Paige Paterson, praised the winning districts.

"My top priority as first lady is to fight the epidemic of childhood obesity and I applaud the districts who have found creative, proactive ways to bring the highest standards to their lunchrooms," she said.

Jane Steigerwarld, former director of food services in Islip, applied for the award before she retired from the district last summer.

She could not be reached yesterday, but during a tour of Islip High School's cafeteria last school year, she attributed the quality of the food to the district's board deciding to increase the price students are charged for a meal. She convinced the board to raise high school prices from $1.60 to $2 last year.

This year, the price went up again, to $2.50. The average price of lunch in Long Island schools last year was $1.66.

Steigerwarld and others have said raising prices is crucial to improving the quality of school food.

"We're talking pennies we have to work with," she said of the financial constraints on school food programs, which are expected to break even without help from their districts' budgets. "Pennies."

Improving the meals was also the result of the skills of head cook Arlene Leggio, Steigerwarld said.

Last school year, Leggio rushed between the serving area, showing off salads served in edible tortilla bowls, to the dining area, where she prodded wrestlers to make sure they were eating well despite trying to maintain a certain weight to compete.

Leggio said she loves to cook, using seasonal items such as squash in the wintertime.

"She multitasks unbelievably," Steigerwarld said. "It takes creativity. You have to want to improve and make it better. You have to do it with pride."