April 4, 2025 – Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins visited a Virginia elementary school to call attention to what Kennedy characterized as a collaboration to tackle the country’s chronic disease crisis and “change the nutrition of America’s schoolchildren.”
Rollins said she was inspired by the healthy foods offered at Ferdinand T. Day School, part of the Alexandria City Public School system. “This is what we should be supporting at USDA,” she said, pointing to the salad bar behind them, including “moving farm-fresh produce, as much as is possible, into the schools.”
However, the visit came just a week after the USDA cancelled $10 million in fiscal year 2025 funding for USDA’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant program. That followed the earlier cancellation of $660 million in funding for the Local Food for Schools and Child Care program. Both programs enable schools to get more fresh, local food into cafeterias while supporting small farms.
When asked about how canceling funding fit in with her stated commitment to healthier food in schools, Rollins said she is realigning the agency around “what works well, what’s important” and that a lot of the money being pulled back had not yet been spent or committed. “What we are pulling back now is the COVID-era programs that were affirmed under the last administration that were always meant to come back,” she said.
The Patrick Leahy Farm to School grant program has been in place since 2013, and the school Rollins and Kennedy were visiting likely benefited from it, at least tangentially. The Virginia Department of Education received the grants in 2017, 2020, and 2022 to expand farm-to-school efforts across the state. Last year, Alexandria City Public Schools’ nutrition staff participated in raising awareness of Virginia Farm-to-School; they posted a photo of the same salad bar set-up to showcase their commitment.
