The fluorescently lit cafeteria of Public School 55 in the South Bronx sparked to life as kindergarteners and first-graders file inside. Lunch ladies shush the students as they buzz with excitement: lunchtime today is special.

Although the kids’ lunch trays have the usual items of chicken and milk, even cookies for dessert, the star of the show is the side: a spinach and kale salad with cherry tomatoes and shallots, tossed in an oregano vinaigrette dressing.

Most students receive their cups of salad with a smile. Others push it away with a crinkled nose.

“There are tomatoes,” said one brown-haired boy in disgust.

Another first grader is on her third serving, the vinaigrette still slick on her full face.

“It’s good,” she said. “It’s really yummy.”

The gourmet option wasn’t shipped in or catered by a guest chef. It was grown by the students themselves. While gardening in schools is nothing new, at PS 55 students are farming 37 varieties of fruits and vegetables in the most unlikely of places.

The K-5 school sits in the middle of the South Bronx housing projects in the unhealthiest county in New York state. The concept of fresh and natural greens meeting the mouths of developing children was a relatively foreign one, but the Green Bronx Machine now has students planting, cooking and eating produce all within the same city block.

Green Bronx Machine is a nonprofit that has partnered with the South Bronx school to repurpose an unused fourth-floor library, in a 100-year-old building, into a green sanctuary called the National Health and Wellness Center, which opened in January 2016.

The nonprofit is the brainchild of Stephen Ritz, the founder of Green Bronx Machine and self proclaimed CEO or “Chief Eternal Optimist of Bronx County.” The South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in the country, but where most see poverty, Ritz sees opportunity.

There are also outdoor gardens at PS 55, which sit behind a chainlink fence in the shadows of the towering brick projects. PS 55 is a zone school, so the students who attend it live in the South Bronx. The area has an abundance of unhealthy options and few fresh ones, said Ritz, who calls the cheap, corner store snacks a “MESS”.

“MESS is what I call Manufactured Edible Single-serve Substances,” said Ritz. “This is a very food challenged community. I mean you’re going to see a lot of very heavy kids walk around this community.”

Green Bronx Machine Executive Director Stephen Ritz wears his famous cheese hat and bowtie in front of a painting of himself at Public School 55. If students are lucky, they may be rewarded for good behavior by getting to wear the hat and be “the big cheese.” By Elizabeth Arakelian

One in four children in Bronx public schools is obese, according to the New York City Department of Health. But the bright red doors at PS 55, and the garden beds that flank them, have become a welcoming sign for students. Behind them there will be hands-on learning and soil-stained clothes. Students that enter the school won’t just go to class, but they will also learn that they have the power to decide what goes on their plate.

“We find that when kids do cooking or grow vegetables and learn about the food on their own terms, that they’re much more likely to eat it,” said Bill Yosses, former White House Executive Pastry Chef and Green Bronx Machine partner. “ They’re learning this about themselves. They own it.”

Former White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses attends the harvest lunch at Public School 55 in the South Bronx to chat with students about healthy food. By Elizabeth Arakelian

What started as an afterschool program in the Bronx in 2006 has since blossomed into an international movement with Green Bronx Machine chapters opening across America in Florida, Washington, DC, California, Vermont and Missouri, said Ritz. The organization is also partnering with 20 schools in Canada and Ritz has scouted opportunities in Mexico and Dubai, as well.

Green Bronx Machine has gained international attention and Ritz has taken students to be honored at the White House and featured in TED Talks. His work has led him to meet Pope Francis, present in the United Arab Emirates and he was a 2015 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize.

While Ritz has been successful in drawing attention to the needs of the South Bronx, for the past year and a half he has remained rooted at PS 55. It is here Ritz fosters growth in the students and their gardens. The indoor vertical farming towers in the National Health and Wellness Center burst with kale, chard and other lettuce varieties year-round. Soon, students will plant fruits and vegetables in the outdoor garden boxes. During harvest, they take home pounds of vegetables each week.

Vertical towers that recirculate water allow students at Public School 55 in the South Bronx to grow fresh produce year-round. By Elizabeth Arakelian

But farming at PS 55 is more than a fun activity — it’s actually school work. The Green Bronx Machine curriculum is aligned to Common Core educational standards, so the students are learning age appropriate skills in a hands-on way.

“It’s fractions, it’s decimals, it’s ratios, it’s proportions. It’s the art and science of growing vegetables aligned to content area instruction that allows everybody to benefit instead of just being a fun place where they come and cook and get their hands dirty,” Ritz said.

Plus, the students take on leadership roles.

“I mean I have plant police, leaf monitors, PH patrol, everything that you see here is kid maintained,” said Ritz, gesturing to the vertical farms.

The fourth-floor also boasts a mobile cooking station, equipment to record cooking demonstrations, and bicycles where kids can pedal to generate energy to charge their phones, or see how long they have to ride to burn off a soda.

Ritz even implements a reading to plants program where students sit by the vertical towers and read to the leafy greens. At lunch, Ritz swaps the plants out for bigger, more developed plants and tells the students “‘You did such a good job! Look at what you’ve done!’ So the kids really feel great and they want to perform,” Ritz said.

While the real benefit is students’ appetite for healthy and fresh produce, standardized test scores are also on the uptick and attendance has increased to 97 percent, according to Ritz.
Since its inception the Green Bronx Machine has also linked up 2,200 graduated students with jobs at places like Whole Foods and Fresh Direct.

When students aren’t learning in the National Health and Wellness Center, it is used for adult workforce development. Students and their families visit and tend to the garden throughout the year, as well.

“You literally see parents and community members shopping there for groceries,” said Ritz of the outside gardens which remain open 24/7 in the summer.

While the ultimate goal of the Green Bronx Machine is to move students up the food chain, the nonprofit is also shaping students’ self-esteem.

Fifth-grader Zuhaiti Arias said she likes being acknowledged for her hard work with the school’s gardening. “People are going to get to know me better and see who I really am,” she said.

At PS 55 choosing swiss chard over chips may be a small success, but it could lead to something greater, which students like Arias are reminded of each time they enter the National Health and Wellness Center and see the phrase “Si Se Puede” painted on the wall.

“That means ‘Yes we can’,”explained Arias. “ It means that we can do anything in the world if we believe in ourselves and do hard work.”

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Harlem Globetrotter Anthony “Buckets” Blakes, 36, presents the “ABCs of Bullying Prevention” at Bishop Ford High School. Photo by Jordyn Taylor

You’d never guess it by his confident smile, 6’2” stature, and impressive basketball tricks, but Buckets Blakes was bullied as a kid. Now, he’s on a mission to stop the same thing from happening to New York City schoolchildren.

Anthony “Buckets” Blakes, 36, plays point guard and shooting guard for the Harlem Globetrotters. He has teamed up with the National Campaign to Stop Violence to present “The ABCs of Bullying Prevention,” a community outreach program directed at students in Brooklyn and Queens. This morning, he spoke to around 400 students in the auditorium of Bishop Ford High School, near Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Students from nearby St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy, and from P.S. 50 in Jamaica, Queens, were also in attendance.

Children in the audience said bullying was a problem in their schools.

“A kid would bully another kid, just by the way they looked, or the way they dressed,” said Jeremy Caraballo, 10, a fifth grader at PS 50. “They would tease them, they would pick on them.”

Andy Valle, 10, also in the fifth grade at PS 50, remembered an instance of racial bullying at school.

“In school, one of my classmates was in a fight just ‘cause this bully named him,” he said. “[It was because] he was black, and how his skin color looked like.”

Saudia Kahn, 9, of PS 50, attentively watches “Buckets” Blakes. Saudia said that she had been bullied in school. Photo by Jordyn Taylor

Saudia Kahn, 9, a student at PS 50, was a victim of bullying herself. She said she wished bullies would just leave her alone.

“I get pushed down sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know who’s doing it. I just get a little hurt, but I don’t care. I just walk away. ‘Cause I don’t wanna get in much trouble. I wish [the bullies] would change a little bit. Other kids could get really hurt.”

During his animated speech, Blakes informed students about “The ABCs of Bullying Prevention”: A, for action; B, for bravery; and C, for compassion. He illustrated the lesson by sharing his own challenges with bullying, and explaining how he overcame them.

“I’ve been bullied before, and I just walk away,” Blakes said. “I was always that happy, smiling kid at school, so the bully that we had at our school, he didn’t like me very much. [Bullies] wanna take the power of your happiness away from you. You can be brave by walking away. You can also be brave by not participating in talking behind someone’s back, or spreading gossip and rumors about somebody.”

Blakes also urged the kids to show compassion and to ally themselves with the bullying victims.

“Having compassion for someone that’s been bullied is about trying to make that person your new friend,” said Blakes. “Or, you could just ask that particular person to sit down and have lunch with you for that day. For those five minutes of your compassion, you’ve changed their life. You brought their happiness back that that bully tried to take away from them.”

To finish the session, Blakes explained why basketball – and life – works better without bullying, and when everybody gets along.

“You’ll find out that you guys are more alike than you are different,” said Blakes. “You’re always gonna have to deal with someone, so you might as well learn to work well with each other. And that’s why the Globetrotters are so unique on the basketball court – ‘cause everybody’s on the same page. There’s no one big star. We’re all a piece of a huge puzzle.”

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At P.S. 41 in the West Village, the kitchen is already turning out lunches almost completely in line with new federal regulations. The new rules went into effect last month and require fewer processed foods and more healthy ingredients. This pizza bagel is made with freshly-cooked sauce and olive oil instead of blended oils. Photo by Edna Ishayik

Judging by the joyous grade school cafeteria clamor, Pizza Fridays are the favorite menu line up of the students at Public School 41 in the West Village. On a recent Friday, the kindergarteners through fifth-graders bit happily into their gooey, cheesy, saucy lunches.

Warmed over toaster-oven pizza, this is not. Here, the mozzarella is fresh, the sauce is cooked in the morning, and the bread (bagels, in this case) are whole wheat. In fact, nothing that comes out of the school’s kitchen is processed. Everything is made from scratch.

That was the case even before new federal regulations that will upgrade the quality of the food school kids eat at lunchtime went into effect last month. Across the nation, cafeterias now will be forced to provide a healthier meal for their young customers. Schools will be switching from tater tots to sweet potato fries, ditching hot dogs for kidney beans, offering more vegetables and removing many processed foods.

But in New York City, meals mostly meet, and in some cases exceed, the standards now required by federal law.

“The City has been ahead of the curve when it comes to offering more nutritious meals to students,” said Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education representative. “With the new USDA guidelines, there are some factors we need to review, including costs associated with the new policy, but we support the push towards healthier, more nutritious food choices for students.”

She said restrictions on the amount of trans fats children are served have already been met, as have the low sodium standards. There will be some adjustments necessary to catch up with the grain-rich requirements and weekly saturated fat count, but Feinberg categorizes these as nearly complete.

In the kitchen at P.S. 41, the food served goes far beyond what the city or the new federal regulation asks. For example, though the new standards require only that blended oils be substituted for oils that contain trans fats, P.S. 41 goes further, using olive oil in many cases. It’s a healthier and better tasting alternative that costs considerably more.

P.S. 41 can afford the splurge partially because it’s a wealthier school in a neighborhood where the apartments can cost tens of millions of dollars. But the bonus actually comes from a donation through a partnership with a non-profit called Wellness in the Schools. WITS places a trained chef in the kitchens to push nutrition and healthy eating to it’s potential.

“We take what they used to do, and enhance it,” says Shani Porter, the WITS resident in P.S. 41’s kitchen.

One of the group’s sponsors, high-end supermarket chain Whole Foods, gifted olive oil to the 30 schools enrolled in the program. And that olive oil was another ingredient Porter used to upgrade Pizza Friday.

Last year, Porter was stationed at a school in East New York. Though the poverty level is higher in that neighborhood, the quality of what was served for lunch was essentially the same as what her new West Village students were served.

“There’s no difference,” she said. “All the schools go from a procurement list. They all get a budget depending on how many kids the school serves. Everything is the same.”

And the procurement list already meets the new federal standards.

But the delivery of a healthy lunch in East New York carries an important weight. Porter said that meal was often the only real meal many of kids got all day, so if it wasn’t nutritious, the kids were at a severe disadvantage.

Porter said the healthy food has been well received. The staff must keep an eye on the lettuce levels in the small salad bar set up near the kitchen because the kids come back for seconds.

“They choose from mixed salad, different vegetables — tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, chickpeas — and we make our own salad dressing as well,” Porter said.

Sometimes when a new food is added, like freshly-made vegetarian chili, some of the younger kids balk.

“They see anything green or anything brown and they say, ‘I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,’” Porter said.

But she counsels patience when it comes to testing young palates.

“Once they start to learn, then you don’t see that,” she said. “It takes a few times for the child to really like the food. You have to, not push it on them, but expose them to it. Teach them about it. Let them try it a few times.”

And when all else fails, sometimes Porter will allow for sandwich for a particularly picky eater. But even the jelly is healthy: Porter cooks down dried fruit and makes compote to spread between slices of whole wheat.

Since New York City schools are so close to complying with federal rules, even those without Porter stewing dried fruits and dicing tomatoes are eating healthier meals than their out-of-city counterparts.

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