Dear Parents and Teachers,

Re: Growing Ideas for Developing a Fairmeadow School Garden – please respond by adding your name and e-mail address to the Google Doc linked below if you interested in attending a “town-hall-like” meeting, to be scheduled

A large and increasing number of California schools have created school gardens on their school grounds to promote linkages across school classrooms, cafeterias, local agriculture, waste management, and more.

The seeds have been planted among a few interested parents to float this idea to school teachers and parents to determine the interest level at Fairmeadow.

Aside from what is likely a wealth of experience among the collective group of Fairmeadow teachers and parents, there are many resources to turn to for guidance, including:

• California Department of Education: A Garden in Every School (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/he/garden.asp)
• California School Garden Network (http://www.csgn.org/)
• Existing programs at some other PAUSD elementary schools (e.g., the Ohlone Edible School Yard project: http://edibleschoolyard.org/node/2073, and the Escondido Sprouts project (see attached PPT slide)

Just a few of the objectives would include:

• Getting our kids more connected to food production (particularly veggies, and maybe eggs if we get some chickens as Escondido has).
• Providing an opportunity for Fairmeadow teachers to draw on the gardens as a teaching tool resource (e.g., science and math)
• Creating a Fairmeadow Farm Stand (as Ohlone has), where once/week the students sell produce and learn some basic economic skills
• Providing a space where some of our families could grow food for their own households, like a Community Garden plot, particularly those families that don’t currently have access to this opportunity at their own homes.

There are many options, and many voices to be heard from in our community of families and teachers.

This could start small and slow, and scale up as demand and opportunity determine.

There are several potential locations on Fairmeadow grounds that could be considered for this.

Parent and family involvement would be ESSENTIAL as we would need to make it clear this was not creating an additional burden for our hard-working teachers, but an opportunity for additional support.

If you may be interested, please add your name to the Google Doc (link below)
To be added

Once we have a critical mass of names, we will start looking for a date, time and place to meet together.

Warmly,
Nicki Jones (to be added)
Sarah Creighton – kids, teacher assistant to Penelope Sanders-Jones, Room 10
Christopher Gardner – Joshua (room 10), Zachary (room 11), Stanford nutrition scientist