Yuba River Charter School

Yuba River Charter School (YRCS) gardens currently serve 30 third graders (3 hrs/week, plus 2 hrs cooking/week) and 60 kindergartners (daily gardening/cooking). The school plans to expand edible programs to serve at least 3 more grades (90 students by Fall '15) as they work with Sierra Harvest to design fully integrated K-8 edible programing for all classes (by Fall '16). Free and reduced lunch rates at YRCS are on the rise--from 31% to 55% since 2010. The challenge to fully integrated edible garden programing at this school is scheduling. This year three daily garden classes were put on hold due to this limitation. Thus the school has elected to expand edible gardens to their landscaped areas to accommodate more teachers/classes in the garden at the same time. This grant will provide compost, irrigation, seeds, plants, tools and infrastructure for new and existing edible gardens at one of the few schools in the county that integrates cooking into curricula for multiple grades.