Margaret Dam can’t think of anything more worthwhile to be doing with her life than putting the right kinds of foods into kids.
Watch how the Seattle native lights up like a candle at the mention of fat-free products, proteins, whole grains, organically-grown veggies and natural and lower-sodium foods.
“There’s not one day that is the same or boring about child nutrition, and feeding kids is starting at the very beginning of the health aspect of someone’s life,” said Dam, who this year succeeds Eric Boutin as child nutrition services coordinator for the Auburn School District. “And if you can make an impact when they’re in their elementary school years, you can train kids to choose healthy eating patterns and to be physically active. They can become addicted to a healthy lifestyle.
“… Food nutrition is a business,” Dam added, “and we’re in the business to feed kids, because hungry kids can’t learn. So, our top goal is to feed kids so that they learn and have a better chance of graduating from high school.”
She loves what she’s doing now, but as a young person, she had other ideas about what she wanted to do with her life.
“My dad was an architect, and my mom was the food service director in the Edmonds School District for 36 years,” Dam said. “I tried to avoid becoming a dietician because you want to do something new and different; you don’t always want to follow in your parent’s footsteps. At the end of my sophomore year in college at the UW, I was working in a dormitory serving Haggett Hall, and I talked to the dietician working there. She was not my mother, so I said, ‘Mary Wagner, do you like your job? Is it a good way of life?’ And she said ‘absolutely.’ I have always liked gourmet food. Food is an interest of mine, fine food and wines, I love that. And I became enthused by working with people in the food business.”
Plenty of experience
Dam graduated from the University of Washington in 1975 and has been employed in child nutrition since 1980, the year she first went to work for the Mukilteo School District. Four years later, she became the registered dietician for the Seattle School District, writing menus and supervising six of its 24 schools.
For the last 23 years, she has worked as the school specialist for Food Services of America, which ships food to the Auburn School District and many others throughout the state. She handled the contracts for about 150 school districts, helping to save them money
Dam, who applied this year to be the food services director for the Kent School District and the Seattle School District, counts herself blessed to be working here.
“I am a firm believer that the right things always work out. Auburn is much smaller, but Auburn is the right community, because, from Superintendent Kip Herren on down, they believe in whole foods, they believe in the principle of supporting the child, and they view child nutrition as important as pulling out the computer. So the nutrition, the exercise, the whole thing, it’s fabulous to be here. I feel like I’ve won the gold ring going ‘round the merry-go-round.”
Beyond the challenging business of keeping kids fed and learning, Dam has a full first-year plate.
That includes expanding the successful recycling and composting program at Cascade Middle School to the other 21 schools and working with the City of Auburn and Cedar Grove Composting to orchestrate that effort.
Between January and December of 2011, she will use an $88,000 chef-training grant through King County to train cooks to use more whole and natural foods, and still stay within budget. When the 50 full-time staff members have been trained, they will then go out and train 100 other cooks in surrounding school districts.
“We have to target roughly $3 a lunch and $1.25 for breakfast,” Dam said. “Those are kind of our guidelines. We don’t charge that much to our students, but that’s what it costs to put a meal out. The population here is 50-percent free-and-reduced lunches. That is very, very high. Most of the suburban schools are between 15 and 20 percent. Seattle Schools is roughly 50 percent, so Auburn has a very similar profile to the Seattle Schools in terms of the needy kids here. We want to take the best care we can of our children and make it possible for everybody to have access to healthy food, and also access to learning. Auburn is doing something really unique,” said Dam.
Nutrition Services also will do its part when the Auburn School District starts up its professional learning communities next month.
From October to May, the kids will go to school one hour late every Monday so principals and teachers can meet to identify kids who need more help. The food part of that is when the buses arrive late, nutrition folks have to figure out an efficient way to get kids fed for breakfast, especially the 50 percent of kids on free-or-reduced lunches to ensure they are served breakfast and still get to class on time.
Dam will also keep the highly successful summer lunch program going.
Dam said she is ready to take on the challenges.
“I have a strong connection with managing people,” Dam said. “The cooks have always begged me to come back to those other two school districts because I am a very positive people person. I believe in empowering people to do the best they can do, to learn, to train them to become independent and pretty much run their own business.”
