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COALITION FOR A
NYC SCHOOL GARDENS TASK FORCE

School Gardens Coalition: Past Events

SCHOOL GARDENS TASK FORCE PROPOSAL

The following is a proposal for the creation of a task force to explore key questions and develop solutions to significant challenges facing NYC School Gardens


School Gardens in New York City have a critical role to play in positioning NYC in COVID recovery and beyond, as we move toward an urban green economy connected with eliminating food insecurity, closing disparities in health, training young people for careers in urban agriculture and raising a generation of schoolchildren who are learning the art and science around growing food within a culturally relevant context.


Envisioning and elevating NYC School Gardens in the Adams Administration


We are parents, teachers and administrators from the district and charter sector, academics, community based organizations and school garden partners. We come from throughout the city; we work in elementary, middle and high schools.


We believe school gardens provide critical benefits for students and our city.  Children deserve an opportunity to plant, grow, harvest and eat food they have grown, as well as access to safe, healthy outdoor spaces that facilitate a deep understanding of our interdependence with the natural world.  


School garden programs:

  • Connect students to science, social studies, arts, and mathematics through real world, authentic activities

  • Provide a setting for young people to engage with each other and support social emotional growth

  • Provide an opportunity for English Language Learners to use their emerging language skills while bringing their prior knowledge into the garden classroom

  • Offer students possibilities of potential careers

  • Bring parents and caregivers into the school community, and connect the school to the larger community

  • Provide opportunity for students to grow and try new plant foods, and food service to incorporate harvests into tastings

  • Create habitat for native species, support more sustainable school communities, and increase NYC’s environmental sustainability

  • Provide students a healing space to disconnect from the stressful modern electronic world. 

  • Can be incorporated into the Department of Education’s socio-emotional development plan following testing during the 2021-2022 academic year to promote “whole child” growth.


Building on your exemplary efforts as Brooklyn Borough President, your support to school gardens and hydroponics, and your vision of “the new agrarian economy”, we urge you to establish a Task Force to elevate NYC school gardens within the context of COVID recovery, equity, healthy food and sustainability in your administration. We anticipate that the recommendations of the Task Force will articulate the concrete steps that will support school communities in the implementation of this important work.


Some of the issues the Task Force may consider:

  1. How do individual schools and the school system work across city agencies and community based organizations in a way that promotes equity?

  2. How can procurement for materials and supplies for school gardens be streamlined and made easier for school personnel?

  3. How can the school gardens be better used as outdoor educational spaces?

  4. How can schools find curriculum for the many approaches to school gardens throughout grades and subject areas and special populations while aligning to the school’s instructional practices and state standards?

  5. How can young people be engaged in the care and maintenance of school gardens through the SYEP?

  6. How can the school system allow parent garden leaders consistent access to school garden grounds year round?

  7. How can school gardens include outside groups to care for and benefit from the harvest of school gardens (e.g., local NYCHA community organizations, senior centers, etc.)

  8. How can sites in addition to schoolyards (community spaces, NYC parks, other…) partner with schools on a long term basis to invest in and develop soil, built structure etc.?

  9. How can a research and development component be built into this work, to carry out scholarly research to demonstrate student learning?

  10. How can the school system be supported to work across silos (e.g., garden leaders, food service, facilities, after school programs)?

  11. How does the school system build capacity so that more school leaders and staff have the requisite skills?

  12. How can NYC agencies (including the DOE) highlight exemplary models of school gardens (thinking agricultural HS, youth farm with business model, teaching gardens, sensory gardens, gardens for other-abled etc.)?

  13. How can school garden programs be amplified to support specific populations, such as immigrant communities (students working in the garden alongside parents/caregivers), overage under-credited young people (paid internships, job training) etc.?

  14. How can Career Technical Education (CTE) be expanded to include agricultural skills, traditional and emerging food production?

  15. Where (in what city office, Department, agency) should this work be centered, if that is recommended?

  16. How can schools systemically allow for school parents and garden leaders to have consistent access to garden grounds for year round gardening maintenance needs?


Thanks to the support of city leaders over the past decade, we have significant local expertise in best practices for creating and sustaining school garden spaces and partnerships.  Providing a forum in which these experts can come together and consider best school garden practices and necessary support for the wide variety of school communities in our city as a whole is a critical and foundational step in allowing all students in our city the benefits of access to school gardens and garden programming.  The Adams Administration has the experience, understanding and connections needed to shape an inclusive and effective  NYC School Gardens Task Force that will provide guidance and support as NYC continues to stand at the forefront of efforts to develop models of urban sustainability.  



Betty Feibusch, Co-Leader

Garden Train


Kathy Park Price, Founder and Co-Leader

Garden Train


Ansley Samson, NYC Public School Parent

Westinghouse Campus Garden Coordinator


Susan Tenner, Executive Director

Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School (BUGS)


Kate Burt, PhD, RDN

Lehman College, City University of New York


Manuela Zamora, Executive Director

NY Sun Works


Megan Nordgren, Director of Program Development

NY Sun Works


Cara Sclafani, Chair

D3 GreenSchools


Shanon Morris, Executive Director

Edible Schoolyard NYC 


Mirem Villamil, Head Garden Manager

Edible Schoolyard NYC

Christina Delfico, Founder

iDig2Learn

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