On Tuesday October 19^th we held CCEF’s annual thank you event for major donors held at the delicious Akasha Restaurant. We had a fabulous turnout with over 65 business and community members attending.  Thank you to City Manager John Nachbar, City Council members Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, Scott Malsin, Andrew Weissman, Jeffrey Cooper and School  Board Vice President Scott Zeidman for attending. Interim Superintendent Patti Jaffe thanked the attendees for all that they had contributed to the schools. She then presented CCEF’s Business Partners of the Year who were present and applauded their contributions to individual schools.  The district as a whole benefits from the enrichment of its individual schools.

Traditionally, the Benefactors Breakfast is the occasion to kick off CCEF’s focus for the year, which this year is nutrition education and building gardens in our elementary schools.  Peggy Curry and Sarah Gelb from the non-profit GrowingGreat made an informal presentation.   As of now, all but one of our elementary schools has the nutritional education program started and 3 out of the 5 elementary schools have gardens.  Our goal is to have nutritional education for 3^rd through 5^th grades and to have working gardens in all the elementary schools for K through 5^th grade students to cultivate and harvest.   Vegetable gardens promote an awareness of good nutrition and the variety of good foods to eat, making the nutrition education more appealing and effective.