Since the third week of November, Low-Income Student Aid Inc. has been serving healthy food to students at Oak Creek School in Cornville as part of its new pilot program, Smart Snacks 4 Students.
The program has the older students prepare nutritious snacks for their younger peers at the kindergarten- through eighth-grade school.
“My inspiration to take on the Smart Snacks pilot program came from observing a significant decline in the quality of snacks students were bringing to school in recent years,” Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District Agriculture Coordinator and Vice President of LISA Lyndsay Ludden wrote. “I see firsthand that many of our students are regularly consuming ultra-processed foods that are high in sugar and additives but provide no nutritional value. These ‘empty calories’ impact students’ energy levels, focus, and overall well-being. This
program was driven by a clear need among Cornville students for access to healthier, more nourishing snack options.”
Students preparing the snacks are enrolled in Ludden’s regular agriculture class, where snack preparation is part of the existing curriculum’s culinary component. They receive hands-on training in nutrition, food safety, knife skills and basic cooking techniques.
During a typical prep session, 25 to 30 students divide into stations, each working on different parts of the recipe before combining everything together, taking 20 to 30 minutes per week.
“Every student in the school has an opportunity to take a snack,” Ludden wrote. “It’s usually about 175 to 200 kids. They are given the snack during their first morning break, so even if they skipped breakfast they still have a little something before lunch.”
LISA has been providing direct financial assistance to local working-class families since 2017, but made the decision to expand its offerings with Smart Snacks to help address student nutrition and wellness.
“Our goal is to show students healthy eating habits while they’re young,” LISA Founder Eric Wyles said. “We think this is a huge social health determinant — it’s showing kids how to eat healthier.”
Some of the snacks provided to Cornville students so far include vegetable soup, fruit kebabs, protein balls and veggie quinoa bowls.
“The snacks provided are simple, nutritious recipes that have been carefully selected to be ‘kid-friendly’ while still meeting healthy nutrition standards,” Ludden wrote. “Each week, I create a detailed ingredient list based on the upcoming recipes. Because the snacks use fresh, perishable ingredients, food is ordered on a weekly basis to ensure quality, freshness, and food safety.”
“These sorts of snacks can be used for incentives,” Wyles said. “Instead of giving kids a candy bar for a good job on their school reading exam, periodically they can do something kind of cool. One of the things they did was they made Grinch Christmas smoothies. They had fresh fruit and ice, and then they put spinach in it to turn it green.”
So far, LISA has allocated $7,500, spending $3,854.45 for a 54-inch commercial refrigerator at the school, $433.89 for three wheeled serving carts; $23.71 for serving trays, $104.21 for single-use serve wear and $496.94 on food, as of Dec. 31.
“We would like to see the Smart Snacks come in between 20 cents and 30 cents per snack, because that’s very attainable to find grant funding for that, because our goal is to serve the greater good,” Wyles said. “We want to drill down on every cost.”
Wyles added that LISA is working with local grocers to buy the food and uses a third-party delivery service so that it doesn’t have to purchase vehicles. LISA will spend the remainder of the school year evaluating the program and cost before expanding the snacks program to other schools, Wyles said.
LISA expanded to the Beaver Creek School District in the third week of January. The district’s Student Support specialist Heather McCallum will be the local coordinator. The only district not part of LISA in the Verde Valley or Sedona is the Camp Verde Unified School District. While Wyles said he wants to add Camp Verde to the direct aid program, there is currently no timeline.
LISA made a brief presentation to the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors on Jan. 21 as part of an initial step to expand its direct aid program to communities on the west side of the county. On Jan. 22, LISA’s board approved the expansion starting in the fall, and “now the planning stages begin,” Wyles later wrote.
“We have a goal to [expand] through the county, but that’ll all be dependent upon community support and funding,” Wyles said. “What I mean by that is whether or not we can get tax credit dollars from communities.”
