Northeast Farm to School Institute: Application Questions Preview

The Northeast Farm to School Institute is a unique year-long professional learning opportunity for selected school, district, or early childhood teams from New England and New York. Applications for the 2025–26 program open on January 6, 2025.

Looking to get a sense of the application before it is launched? Below are the application questions for the 2025–26 program. Along with these longer answers, you'll be asked to share the contact information for all team members. 

Every team completes one application as a group; individuals may not apply. We encourage and seek diverse teams that contain members of different racial and gender identity, experience levels, and program roles.
 

Application Questions

1.  Describe the demographics (or population) that your early childhood center, school or district currently serves.

2.  Utilizing the Farm to School Rubric please choose the word (Emerging, Developing, Deepening, Thriving) that best describes your current efforts integrating farm to school in the cafeteria/meal program. Please explain why you chose this one. 

3.  Utilizing the Farm to School Rubric please choose the word (Emerging, Developing, Deepening, Thriving) that best describes your current efforts integrating farm to school in the classroom. Please explain why you chose this one. 

4.  Utilizing the Farm to School Rubric please choose the word (Emerging, Developing, Deepening, Thriving) that best describes your current efforts integrating farm to school in the community (includes families, PTO, farmers, community organizations, etc.). Please explain why you chose this one. 

5. Please choose the word that best describes how you see farm to school fitting in or elevating other initiatives or policies (i.e., school wellness, social-emotional learning, afterschool programming, etc.) in your center, school, and/or district. Refer to "Staying Power and Integration" section of the Farm to School Rubric. Please explain why you chose this one.

6.  What does your team hope to gain from participating in the Northeast Farm to School Institute? Please share two specific goals and an associated objective for each goal.

7. Is there anything we haven't asked that you would like to share about your school/early childhood center or farm to school program?

Please check out our FAQ page for more information about the criteria we use and how we select teams for the Institute.  Questions? Reach out to [email protected].