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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Allison Marino, Director of Public Affairs at Edible Schoolyard NYC
10:39:02
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3 min
Allison Marino, representing Edible Schoolyard NYC, testifies about the importance of food education in New York City public schools and requests increased funding for food education programs in the FY 2026 budget. She highlights the success of current programs and outlines specific funding requests to expand and strengthen food education initiatives.
- Requests $3,000,000 for food education programming in NYC public schools
- Proposes a $2,500,000 speaker's initiative to support organizations providing food and nutrition education
- Advocates for improved nutrition security and expanded summer opportunities for enrichment and food access
Allison Marino
10:39:02
Thank you so much council member Joseph for holding this hearing and for sticking with all of us late into the evening tonight.
10:39:09
I'm Allison Marino, the director of public affairs at Edible Schoolyard NYC, and I also serve on the steering committee of the Food Ed Hub at the Tisch Food Center at Columbia University, and I'm also the board chair of equity advocates, which convenes the New York City Food Policy Alliance.
10:39:25
Edible Schoolyard's mission is to support access to edible education, hands on cooking and gardening experiences for every child in New York City.
10:39:33
We partner with public schools to help students build healthy relationships with themselves, each other, and their environment through food.
10:39:39
And last school year, we taught over 2,100 lessons to nearly 4,000 students in 23 schools across the city, including in council members Sanchez, Stevens, and Hanif's districts.
10:39:51
The FY twenty five budget, with your committee's support and leadership, prioritized food education for schools.
10:39:58
A 30 new public schools, over twice as many as the year before, are now prioritizing hands on culturally relevant food education experiences for their students.
10:40:09
And last year, over a thousand New York City public school teachers were trained to incorporate edible education into their classrooms.
10:40:16
We are optimistic that with ongoing support and investment from the city, food education providers like Edible Schoolyard can continue to help even more students build healthy relationships with food, school, each other, and the environment next year.
10:40:30
In the FY '20 '6 budget, we have an exciting opportunity to amplify the impact of the investments that this committee has made so far in schools as centers for food education, food access, and social, emotional, and intellectual nourishment.
10:40:46
We urge the city council to continue to prioritize food education in New York City public schools and strengthen support for food education and their partner organizations in this year's executive budget.
10:40:58
To do so, we specifically request that your committee increase funding available to New York City public schools for food education programming to $3,000,000.
10:41:06
This would continue to fund all 190 schools currently receiving funding while allowing for new schools to also begin programming.
10:41:14
To establish a speaker's initiative to facilitate targeted funding to support the capacity of organizations providing food and nutrition education to New York City public schools at $2,500,000.
10:41:26
And our written testimony also outlines additional requests that would strengthen and support food education organizations and their partners to ensure that your investments so far can continue to make an equitable impact.
10:41:39
We also urge the city council to improve nutrition security for New York City Students and their families.
10:41:44
Again outlined in my written submission but specifically I'd love to highlight increasing funding for free health bucks which has not seen an increase in funding for CBOs for years.
10:41:56
And finally we urge the city council to expand support for summer opportunities for enrichment and food access.
10:42:03
Specifically we'd love to see the contracting for schools and CBOs done earlier on the same timeline as for SYEP so that CBOs can specifically contract to support schools that are going to be open for summarizing and so that we can specifically work with them to incorporate, we'd love to see a required meal period so that students, especially those who rely on summer meals for a lot of their food access, so that we can make sure that we incorporate with them to support and also get, you know, all the resources we need to do so early enough in advance.