June 23, 2026

By Lisa Abelar

Photo courtesy of Janeen Peterson

While students in Alexandria, Minnesota spend spring daydreaming of summer days on the lakes,  Janeen Peterson and her team are trying to figure out what’s for lunch. Peterson is the food and nutrition director for Alexandria School District, which serves about 4,000 students across several elementary schools, a junior high and a high school.

One of her responsibilities is planning the school lunch menus for next year and her job has gotten more difficult. Grant funds that she used to purchase fresh meat and produce from local farmers and producers for the past few years won’t be available to her district for the 2026-27 school year. 

“It has been great,” Peterson said of the grant funding. “It has allowed us to increase our local purchasing. And it supports our state and community.”

Peterson moved to Alexandria from the Twin Cities metro area about seven years ago and never looked back. The lakes drew her in.  

“We fell in love with this community,” she said. “It’s fun living in a lake town in Minnesota.”

Alexandria is a community surrounded by water, with a charming main street, and kids who prefer meatballs and potatoes over chicken tenders. Peterson is a dietitian by training who leads a nutrition team that is focused on reducing the processed foods the district buys.

Photo courtesy of Janeen Peterson

“We’re lucky we have students who will embrace some of these foods, like chicken thighs baked from a raw state. It’s a little more foreign to some students somewhere else,” Peterson said. “Our students know that chicken has bones in it.”

In recent years, grant funding from the Full Tray program, managed by Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture, has made it easier for Peterson’s team to pursue its mission to reduce the amount of processed foods on school menus. The 1:1 matching grants, which also received funding through the Local Food for Schools program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, supplemented school budgets and gave nutrition directors like Peterson more options for developing school lunch programs. 

“It always helped offset the costs of local food purchasing,” she said, noting that the quality of locally-sourced food exceeded that of food coming from large distributors. “It also is fresher and the travel time on it is so much less. When you get these products, they last longer and look better and, as a dietician, I understand they have a higher nutritional value as well.”

Peterson used grant funds to buy chicken thighs and drumsticks from a local farmer. School staff would roast the thighs and drumsticks and serve them alongside locally-sourced potatoes, lettuce and milk.  

“It definitely changed the direction of our menus,” she said. “We were trying to do things that are sustainable. It was important to us to build our menu up so we can have things offered year round rather than just in September and October.”

Funding for the Full Tray grants was severely curtailed when the Local Food for Schools program was canceled by President Donald Trump in March of 2025. Moving forward without that funding, but with an enduring commitment to reduce the amount of processed foods Alexandria students are offered, means Peterson will need to make more strategic choices.

“I’ll just be more picky and choosey,” she said. “Those dollars that were cut do make a difference to farmers, too. I’m going to have to do less for next year.”

Photo courtesy of Janeen Peterson

She plans to look at what makes the most sense to buy locally at a higher price versus what makes sense to purchase from a national distributor like Sysco. Based on her students’ love of potatoes, it won’t make financial sense to buy those large quantities locally. The same goes for corn. But when it comes to green beans or edamame, there are fewer fans of those legumes. So, she might be able to keep those purchases local. 

For Peterson, losing access to the funding means her team will serve less fresh food, the local farms she has supported with her purchases will experience a financial loss, the nutritional value of the food being served could be reduced, and she will likely spend more time managing food purchases from month to month. 

“I’ll have to prioritize time where I can,” she said. “I’m pretty lucky to work with a bunch of people willing to do the extra work to do what we feel is right for kids. It sounds cliché to say that but they really do care.”