Dear County Superintendents, District Superintendents, Chief Business Officials, and Food Service Directors:

School Lunch Hero Day—May 3, 2024

On behalf of the California Department of Education Nutrition Services Division, I would like to encourage all school administrators, staff, students, and parents to celebrate School Lunch Hero Day on Friday, May 3, 2024.

School food professionals in California are committed to increasing scratch cooking and incorporating fresh, locally grown, and even organic ingredients into their school meals so that students have access to quality, flavorful, culturally relevant, and nutritious meals. School Lunch Hero Day provides an excellent opportunity to acknowledge and thank these dedicated and unstoppable heroes and heroines on your school food service team!

Your school food service professionals are not only influential in your local cafeteria, but they also help stand strong and lead the monumental Universal Meals Program (UMP) movement. These culinary professionals are the cornerstone of this program. It is because of their steadfast commitment to student health and desire to improve learning outcomes for our children, that California can offer every student a quality, nutritious breakfast and lunch each and every school day. School meals are often the healthiest meals students eat, changing and shaping the health of students today and tomorrow.

We encourage you to take this opportunity to praise, celebrate, and spotlight nutrition professionals and their one-of-a-kind superpowers. Below are some ways you can join the celebration:

• Be thankful: Encourage students to create homemade thank you or appreciation cards to share with their favorite school lunch heroes.
• Get creative: Promote School Lunch Hero Day by creating posters to display in common areas for all students and teachers to read, praise, and enjoy.
• Give back: Switch roles and let the students and teachers serve their nutrition professionals a well-deserved, scratch cooked, local, fresh meal or snack.
• Get social: Create a shout out for your nutrition team on social media. Make an individual post for each staff member thanking them and highlighting their unique superpowers. Use the hashtag #SchoolLunchHeroDay.

There are many ways to celebrate our school lunch heroes; find something that fits your student population, campus, meal service, and scheduled events! Your partnership is critical to ensure that this year’s School Lunch Hero Day is the best one yet.

We encourage schools to celebrate school nutrition professionals as valued peers and partners in learning.

For more information on this topic, visit the School Nutrition Association’s 2024 School Lunch Hero Day Campaign at https://schoolnutrition.org/event/2024-school-lunch-heroday/.

For questions regarding School Lunch Hero Day, contact Desiree Rojo, Nutrition Education Specialist, by email at drojo@cde.ca.gov.

Sincerely,

Kim Frinzell, Division Director
Nutrition Services Division
California Department of Education
KF:dr