'Classroom' experience may turn into careers

Tully High School's students are eating 'fresher' these days, with produce right from the high school greenhouse.  It's a collaboration between Ag Teacher Derek Hill, and Food Service Director Peggy Murphy.  Hill's students learn about greenhouse management for a college credit course, and in the process produce tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, cantaloupes and broccoli.  Murphy says the cafeteria does a salad bar a couple times a month, and side salads at every mealtime. "We do post it" she says, when the produce is local, so everyone on the cafeteria line knows it.  "Yeah, I definitely wasn't a big vegetable eater," says Junior Conor Barry, who also works in the greenhouse, until he started the class, which includes both classroom and hands-on sessions.   "Growing a plant in the greenhouse is different than in a cornfield in the summertime," says Hill.
"We try to use management techniques to give the students a feel for everything.  We don't use any pesticides--this is Nature at its best."
Right now the produce goes to the high school, but if they have enough they want to expand to the elementary complex as well.
And, more than produce is in the pipeline: they're about to launch aquaculture, and may be raising tilapia for the cafeteria as well. 
In the spring, the same greenhouse produces the hanging baskets that grace Tully in the summertime. "We try to benefit the community," says Hill.  And, besides encouraging better eating habits, the produce project may also produce jobs and careers: several of the students say they'd like to work in the field.  Hill says only one in four ag jobs is filled, so there are plenty of positions for the students to go into.