Thank you, Chef Dave!
By Chris Gavin, PFP Educator
This week our community bids farewell to Chef David Dunn, Director of Food Services for the Poughkeepsie City School District, as he moves on to his new leadership role in the Kingston City School District. Chef Dave, as he is affectionately known, has been a fierce advocate for Poughkeepsie youth as he’s worked to ensure that every school-age child has access to nourishing meals. He has been an indispensable ally of Poughkeepsie Farm Project in our work towards building a more just and sustainable local food system. All of us at PFP have deep gratitude for his contributions and collaborations with us, and Chef Dave will be deeply missed even as we wish him well in his next endeavor.
Healthy Local Food
Providing school meals shouldn’t just be about making sure kids get enough calories - the food should also be high quality, nourishing, and healthy. With this belief at the core of his work, Chef Dave has made great strides to improve school meals in Poughkeepsie. With his leadership, the food service department has committed to replacing packaged items with fresh produce whenever possible and is working to build relationships with regional farms so that students are eating local, seasonal, high quality food. Despite it being much easier to order produce from the larger suppliers often preferred by industrial-scale kitchens, Chef Dave has consistently made the effort to purchase local produce, including PFP produce, whenever possible. As part of PFP’s Harvest of the Month program, the food service department highlights a new local and seasonally available vegetable or fruit each month, featuring it on the school menu and serving it to students throughout the month. To promote healthy foods at the high school he even arranged to get a refrigerated vending machine installed so students could access fresh fruits and other healthy snacks during the school day. And to ensure that his staff are knowledgeable about eating and preparing healthy food, each year the entire food service team visits PFP for professional development that includes a farm tour and workshops on culinary skill building and cooking with local produce.
Food Access
Chef Dave has always been committed to improving food access in Poughkeepsie. Some major achievements have included regularly offering free produce at summer meal sites and working to revive the district’s backpack program in which high-need families receive shelf stable and easy to prepare foods to prevent gaps in nutrition over the weekend. In response to the growing food insecurity resulting from the pandemic, Chef Dave quickly pivoted the work of the food service department to ensure students still had access to school meals. Poughkeepsie is a school district where all students are able to receive free breakfast and lunch, and the closure of schools created a huge gap in food access for families who rely on school meals as a major source of nourishment. Within days, Dave and his staff were out in the community making meals available for school age youth at twelve different sites. He even took the extra step to clear out the freezers and refrigerators at the schools and give out the food to anyone at meal sites who needed it. In addition to offering weekday meals during the academic year, he was also able to provide meals throughout the summer and continue the backpack program for high-need families. And because he was concerned about students’ ability to access food over the winter holiday, the food service team went beyond expectations by providing holiday food boxes for high-need families and offering an additional four days of meals while schools were on break. Through all of these efforts, Chef Dave has shown his commitment to ensuring that the children of Poughkeepsie have reliable access to free and nutritious food.
Commitment to Education
Through his collaborations with PFP, Dave has shown that not only is he a chef and an advocate for food access but he also has the heart of an educator. For many years, he has played an active role with our teen after school program at Poughkeepsie High School. In addition to generously opening his kitchen to our staff and students, he regularly collaborated on developing curriculum and teaching workshops on culinary skill building. Chef Dave has also partnered with our team to enhance the healthy food offerings and learning opportunities available at school meal sites. For nearly a year PFP educators have been distributing free produce at school meal sites along with recipe ideas and storage tips to help families feel more confident preparing the food. We have also been using school meal sites as a hub for our programming as we distribute materials such as meal prep kits, gardening projects, and school supplies directly into the hands of Poughkeepsie families.
From all of us at Poughkeepsie Farm Project, a heartfelt thank you to Chef Dave Dunn for years of collaboration and support. Your leadership has established a strong foundation for your successor to build on and we look forward to our continued relationship with the district’s food service department. Our community is stronger, healthier, and better nourished because of your dedication, and we will continue your legacy by working to provide healthy nourishing food to the youth of Poughkeepsie.
