BATON ROUGE - The child nutrition program for the EBR school district has a new menu. When the spring semester started they introduced new food options to the students with a program called Farm to School.

Farm to School allows the school to source food that is locally grown.

"It will provide us a way to not have to travel so far to get our food from California and places like that," said Chef James Porter, regional director. "The longer it travels, the less nutritional value we get by the time it reaches us."

Some of the locally sourced items include sweet potatoes, strawberries, watermelon, and catfish. Aside from that, another new incentive with the district will be meals provided on Saturday and Sunday.

"We are expanding on the weekends," Human Resources Director Nichola Hall said. "We are starting with Charles R. Kelly Center and then eventually we're going to network out into the community because we think that there is an opportunity to make sure that kids are getting fed." 

The district says getting this program off the ground is a part of the district's goal to be able to feed and help children.

"Students sometimes don't know where their next meal is coming from and to know that they can get breakfast lunch and supper here at school is very important, vital," says Chef Maria Newman, regional director.

As far as that new spring menu, it's diverse and represents more than one culture.

"Our culturally relevant dishes are Asian slaw salad and chicken and vegetable dumplings that will be debuting this week actually since it's Lunar New Year," Newman said.