A few months back I shot a story for Food Management Magazine profiling Jean Ronnei, the Director of Nutrition and Commercial Services for St. Paul Public Schools. I met Jean at one of the public schools some portraits, then I stuck around to photograph a {gulp} lunch hour. Yes, it was a melee.

When I think of school lunches I remember back to some pretty bland, mediocre stuff: the most basic of dishes, with the bare minimum of fruits and vegetables. So I was surprised and heartened to learn more about what Jean’s got going in St. Paul.

Menus have expanded to offer dishes representative of St. Paul’s diverse population. Efforts are made to source ingredients locally. Student helpers scrape food waste into compost bins prior to sending the trays to the dishwasher. As I don’t have kids myself I’m not really up on the state of school food programs in general, but what they’ve done in St. Paul gives me hope.

Not only that; the lunch ladies were super nice.

Some images from the story: