CHILTON - High school students are notorious for being picky eaters, but students in the Chilton and Hilbert districts are diving into dishes such as Italian marinated chicken breasts, garlic-broasted potatoes and fresh pork fajitas.

Diane Chapeta, nutrition coordinator for the districts, said a lot of the progress is because of a program that has the schools buying directly from area farmers.

Almost three years ago, the districts gutted their existing meal programs and, under Chapeta's direction, took a team approach to improving the quality of meals by including real food on the trays.

"Real food, meaning not chopped and formed, not processed, not cooked three different ways before you get it," Chapeta said. "Real food meaning an actual cut of meat, an actual chicken breast that looks like a chicken breast."

She said most school lunch programs depend on federal commodities for the bulk of their food, because they are cheap and have specific, measurable levels of nutrients, portion sizes, allowed ingredients and other elements specified by the Department of Public Instruction for subsidized meals.

"It's not the best food," Chapeta said. "They've gotten so far away from the actual meat that they've had to start adding nutrients into it just to make it acceptable. For us, it's no longer acceptable."

Chapeta said she turned to locally produced food when she heard about a new Farm to School Initiative being implemented in Illinois and Minnesota. Some Wisconsin people were interested in trying the same thing, she said.

Through UW-Extension and searches online, Chapeta found a nearby apple orchard and two vegetable growers willing to work with her and the kitchen staff. She took her plan to the school board and got approval.

"The apples came the very next week after we had the discussions," she said.

Chapeta is now the coordinator for Northeast Wisconsin Farm to School. She has nine schools in Cooperative Educational Service Agency 7 buying local foods and seven more committed to the program. She is visiting schools from Washington Island to Random Lake, helping them make the connection between growers and school districts.

One of the challenges is that there are as many ways to pick, process, size, grade and package food as there are farmers, Chapeta said.

"Every grower that we pick up in every district I'm working with, we always find something new," she said.

Another challenge is that school kitchen staff members aren't always able or willing to shift from established programs or resources.

"Change is not easy, and the managers and leads really have to work with their staff. They have to re-train," she said.

In Chilton, lead cook Julie Birschbach said she and her three staff members had no particular problems other than getting a handle on how much preparation time was needed for certain kinds of food.

"I think it's just a matter of getting used to preparing that large an amount," she said. "You're used to preparing fresh potatoes at home for four or five people. Now you're preparing for a couple hundred."

Chapeta said her job is to work with the administration and staff to identify local producers and help them navigate the ins and outs of a new concept.

"Depending on their level of confidence, I either turn it over as soon as I educate them about the process, or I work with them right up to the point where they're shaking a hand," she said.

She is also available to help with fine-tuning if schools or their suppliers run into problems, she added.

For Chris and Amanda Fritsch of Hilbert, a contract with the Hilbert and Chilton school districts meant they could double the size of their grass-fed beef herd.

Amanda Fritsch had a chance to eat lunch at Hilbert.

"I ate there the first day they served our hamburger," she said. "Those kids eat better at that school than they probably eat at home."

That's an element of the school lunch program that makes high-quality food even more important, according to U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan.

For many children, the meal provided at school is the only nutritious meal they may eat in a day, she said during an online chat Nov. 5.

Merrigan had visited the St. Paul, Minn., school district the week before to see how their Farm to School program was working. In the first six weeks of this school year, the district had featured a dozen local fresh fruits and vegetables on the menu and purchased 110,000 pounds of locally produced food, she said.

Fifty-six percent of the district's total fresh fruit and vegetable purchases were from local producers, Merrigan said.

In Chilton, Chapeta said the district is buying about 15 percent of its food locally. That may not sound like much, but compared to other districts, it is, she said.

"The average district that buys from local vendors purchases approximately 1 to 2 percent total, usually cheese or a few fruits and vegetables," she said.

She said the success of the program is showing in other numbers. Prior to changes in the program, the high school served 150 meals a day out of 520 students. They now average 300 to 310 meals, and that doesn't count students who take advantage of a la carte selections, she said.

For kindergartners through eighth-graders, where school lunch participation is traditionally higher, the number went up about 8 percent. Chilton averages 600 out of 625 children a day.

Chilton school board member Larry Hedrich said many schools fear that creating a buy-direct program will cost a lot of money at a time when budgets are tight.

"What actually has taken place is the school nutrition program is costing less now because of more participation, and (students) are getting better food, so really it is a winning scenario," he said.

Instead of repeatedly raising fees for lunches, the district has been able to maintain them at an even level for several years, he said.

Chapeta said the success of a farm to school program depends on how it's managed. If at least 66 percent of the students eat school lunch, at least a portion of the meal should be able to be fresh, she said.

"Now, they are not going to knock chicken nuggets out of the box," she said. "We still serve chicken nuggets, but alongside the chicken nuggets there's a fresh baked potato or oven-broasted potatoes. The next week we're serving a real chicken breast."

She said the trick is to balance kid-friendly food with whole and nutritious foods in a way that also balances the budget. She said an all-local meal would cost about $4 a tray. The school is aiming for trays that cost $2 to $2.10 at the high school and $1.80 to $1.90 for younger students, she said.

Getting the food to the lunch line is only part of the program, Chapeta said. The food also has to move from the lunch line to the trays.

Chapeta said she has taught nutrition classes to students and is available to the teachers.

"We also teach on the (lunch) lines," Chapeta said. "We introduce new foods. We actually market it."

Birschbach said some of the items go over better than others.

"The fresh asparagus, when we put that out there, was a big shock," she said. "Some of the kids were like, 'What is that?' They had never seen asparagus in their life. They tried it."

In the elementary school, kids were fighting over the last spears, Chapeta said.

"You never know how it's going to go," she said.

Chilton High School faces a corn field and is flanked by a farm implement dealership and a cheese distributor. Hedrich said it's a place where agricultural ties are still strong.

Those ties are much weaker in other places, Merrigan said.

"We see a profound disconnect between people who are eating and people who are producing," she said. One of the goals of the Farm to School program is to help students understand their food's source.

In the St. Paul school system, students receive trading cards that identify the farmers and what products they supply to the schools.

"Just like in our restaurants and our farmers markets and grocery stores, it's the customers that really drive the system, so they're trying to help the children be part of the drive for Farm to School," she said.

The Chilton and Hilbert schools also are trying to connect students with farmers using signs that tell where their food comes from.

That element of the program may or may not be making its point, depending on whom you ask.

Senior Kelsey Schaid said she notices the difference in taste between some of the commercial foods and some of the fresh ones, especially on the fruit and vegetable bar.

"I see the signs, but I don't really pay attention," she said.

Hedrich said he sees the success of the program in the number of lunches served. Helping the kids be better nourished is helping them do better in their educational venues, he said.

"It does make a difference what you put in front of them," he said.

Sara Bredesen can be reached at 715-360-7253 or stbrede@gmail.com.