Colorado-grown carrots, peaches and heirloom tomatoes are on lunch trays at seven Lewis-Palmer School District 38 schools this fall, bought with the district’s first grant from the state’s Local Food Program. D38 received $68,925.50 for food, the most the state’s formula allows, and a further $20,797.26 for stipends to the kitchen staff who serve it.
The marinara sauce on the lunch line at Lewis-Palmer School District 38’s elementary schools this fall was cooked by another school district. Boulder Valley School District made it from scratch and sold it to D38 along with a supply of refried beans, D38 says. The peaches came from Palisade. The money came from the state, which this year opened its Local Food Program to every district that serves free school meals. It is the first time D38 has been able to take part, the district says.
The grant belongs to Healthy School Meals for All, the voter-approved state program that since the 2023-24 school year has paid for free meals for every student at schools that opt in. D38 accepted $68,925.50 from the Local Food Program and $20,797.26 from a companion grant for kitchen pay, said Stacey Baker, the district’s director of nutrition services, in written answers to the Independent on Sept. 30. The Colorado food has been on trays since the first week of school, she said, at the five elementary schools and both campuses of Monument Academy. A new committee of students, parents and staff advises on what to buy, and families are welcome to join it.
What the money buys
So far it has bought carrots, lettuce, bell peppers, cauliflower, melons, squash, onions, cucumbers, mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, quinoa and those Palisade peaches, by Baker’s list. The produce arrives through two food hubs, Common Harvest Colorado and Hearty Provisions, which she describes as delivering to the district’s kitchens from the producers. Hearty Provisions runs a warehouse in Denver and lists Colorado Springs among its delivery areas. Common Harvest is newer. When Westword profiled the then-new hub in July 2024, schools were customers it hoped to have; this July CBS Colorado described it as connecting schools with about 80 Colorado farmers, ranchers and food producers.
Much of it goes onto the schools’ salad bars. “We love watching the kiddos try new foods and experience fresh local items,” Baker said.
The state’s definition of local is broad enough to include a sauce. Fresh produce, meat, grains and dairy products other than milk qualify if they are grown or raised in Colorado. So do “value-added” products that a Colorado business has cooked, baked or canned in the state; marinara is one of the state’s own examples. A district may put up to 25 percent of its grant into that category, which for D38 would be $17,231.
Boulder Valley has the kitchen for the job. Its School Food Project cooks for its own schools from a central production facility in Boulder that opened in 2020, and it has described making refried beans there from pinto beans grown in Berthoud.
Twenty-five cents a lunch
The size of the grant is set by formula. A district may claim up to 25 cents for every lunch it served two school years earlier. D38’s seven participating schools served 275,702 lunches in 2024-25, according to the Colorado Department of Education’s claim records. At 25 cents each that comes to $68,925.50, which is the figure D38 accepted, to the cent. Districts are allowed to ask for less. D38 asked for all of it.
The grant is as large as it is because those schools are serving far more lunches than they used to. They served 151,681 in 2022-23, the year before free meals began, and 82 percent more two years later. Breakfasts went from 12,623 to 83,689.
For scale, D38’s kitchens spent $1.37 million on supplies, the budget line that holds food, in the 2024-25 fiscal year, the department’s financial records show. The grant equals about 5 percent of that, all of it reserved for Colorado products.
Statewide the department awarded more than $15.4 million for local food to 131 districts and 14 charter-school sites, and more than $8.4 million for kitchen pay to 151 districts.
Where it is served
The grant follows the free-meal program, so the Colorado food goes where free lunch is served: Bear Creek, Lewis-Palmer, Palmer Lake, Prairie Winds and Ray E. Kilmer elementary schools and both campuses of Monument Academy, the charter school. Lewis-Palmer Middle School and the district’s two high schools run their lunch service separately from that program, and the grant does not extend to them.
A stipend for kitchen staff
The second grant pays the people who do the cooking. D38 applied for a stipend, to be paid as a lump sum this school year, with amounts set by position for kitchen managers and kitchen assistants. Under state rules it goes to employees who spend at least 70 percent of their working time preparing and serving meals in the federal breakfast and lunch programs, and it comes on top of their regular pay. This is the first year the state has offered it.
A committee with a say on the menu
The food grant comes with a seat at the table for families. A district that takes it sets up an advisory committee of students and parents from the schools the grant serves, to give guidance on what is bought so that meals are, in the state’s words, “healthy, culturally relevant and appealing to all students.” D38 advertised through the seven schools and held the committee’s first meeting, in person, on Sept. 16.
The state recommends eight to ten members, a parent in the chair and a meeting each quarter. It lets a district spend up to 12 percent of the grant on the committee, which may include paying members for their time, childcare and translation.
The invitation is open. Anyone interested in joining, Baker said, is welcome to contact Nutrition Services. What goes on the trays next is partly up to them.
Year to year
Both grants are awarded a year at a time, and the department’s page on the program says they “depend on state appropriations.”
D38’s business office is watching the cost side. In a note relayed with the district’s answers, Brett Ridgway, the chief business officer, said the district is “not convinced” that the free-meal program and its grants add up to something “financially viable and self-sustaining,” citing the work of sourcing food, dietary planning and monitoring, and food waste. In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the latest for which the state has published figures, D38’s food-service fund recorded $2.54 million in revenue and $2.76 million in expenses, according to the department’s financial transparency data. The books for 2025-26 are not yet closed, Baker said, with a month of reimbursement claims still to be posted.
D38 has until June 30 to spend the food money and until July 1 to tell the state where it went. Districts opt in again each spring. So far the peaches have come from Palisade and the marinara from Boulder Valley. The bill went to Denver.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: D38’s Board Sets June Deadlines on Pay and Retention, the August board meeting that set this year’s meal prices and heard how many more meals the kitchens now serve · School Starts Aug. 12 in D38, Aug. 11 at Monument Academy, for this year’s meal prices and how to apply for free and reduced-price meals
The state program: Colorado Department of Education news release, July 27, 2026 · Local Food Program frequently asked questions · Wages and Stipends frequently asked questions · Healthy School Meals for All program page · School nutrition claim data · Financial transparency data for Lewis-Palmer 38, fiscal year 2024-25
Suppliers: Common Harvest Colorado · Hearty Provisions · Boulder Valley School District School Food Project · Westword on Common Harvest Colorado, July 5, 2024 · CBS Colorado on Common Harvest, July 23, 2026
District: D38 Nutrition Services
Methodology
The grant amounts, the list of purchases, the participating schools, the account of the advisory committee and the note from Brett Ridgway come from written answers the district sent on Sept. 30, 2026, in reply to questions the Independent emailed on Sept. 24. Stacey Baker, the director of nutrition services, wrote the answers; they arrived from the district’s communications director, Amy Matisek, after her review. Ridgway’s note was relayed in that message and is quoted as the district wrote it. Baker’s remarks about the salad bars and about the 2025-26 books come from an email to the Independent on Oct. 2, sent after she had read a draft of this article.
The statement that D38 received the most the formula allows is the Independent’s calculation. It multiplies the state’s rate of up to 25 cents a lunch, taken from the Colorado Department of Education’s published guidance and its July 27 news release, by the 275,702 lunches that the department’s claim data records for D38’s seven participating schools in the 2024-25 program year. The department has published the list of districts receiving grants and has not published the amounts. The meal counts for 2022-23 and 2024-25 come from the same claim data.
The food-service fund’s figures for the 2024-25 fiscal year come from the department’s financial transparency data for Lewis-Palmer 38. The “supplies” figure covers food and other kitchen supplies across the district; the data does not separate them.
Thank you for reporting on this. Great article. I remember voting for healthy meals in schools. Is wonderful to learn how this is going. I’m inspired.