Stonington ― Students in the district could see locally sourced foods on their school lunch menus as soon as this fall.

Food Services Director Stephanie Deason told the Board of Education on Thursday about her goals for the food services program, including using the district office kitchen to start a farm-to-school local produce processing program and a sea-to-school pilot program.

Because the district office is located in the old middle school, it has a food service kitchen.

“It does pain me a little bit that I have this big, beautiful kitchen space that’s just sitting ― not used ― so I would love to license and use this kitchen here, and that would probably be my produce processing kitchen,” Deason told the board.

Deason, who is finishing her first year as food services director, previously ran a farm-to school program as director of Mansfield Public Schools’ food services department. The program sourced and processed local produce, incorporating it into school lunches, from adding kale to zucchini bread to processing 18 varieties of local produce, including tomatoes, kale, zucchini and eight varieties of squash.

She wants to recreate the Mansfield program in Stonington.

“I definitely want to get back to my farm-to-school,” Deason said. “It definitely pains me a little bit this school year to have to take a step back from that.”

She hopes to start testing recipes late this school year and have the program running by the fall. She said a locally sourced food program has benefits for employees, students and the community.

“It provides staffing hours during the summer when they wouldn’t normally be working; it puts money back into the economy with the local farmers,” she said.

Deason said that once you convince kids that squash is sweet, they are much more likely to try it. She is hoping the same will happen when locally sourced kelp and fish are incorporated into the program.

“When we buy it commercially, it’s breaded and frozen, so what can we get that we can source locally that we can make appealing to kids?” Deason said, adding that getting students to accept fish can be an uphill battle.

“I have met with some folks in the area about some sea-to-school initiatives,” she said, noting she would like to continue work begun by the previous director to incorporate kelp. She is exploring the potential for getting fresh fish.

In addition to bringing more locally sourced foods into the schools, Deason said she would like to increase the amount of catering the department does and diversify food choices across ethnic and dietary preferences.

“I would love to host staff over the summer and do a sort of school meals boot camp ― look at some recipe development, plate presentation, how we can streamline some things to be able to serve some fancier things,” she said.

Deason said they still need a blast chiller to flash freeze the food they process and to clean the space up, but she sees a great potential in the district office kitchen.

Because the department receives its funding through federal and state programs, catering fees and school lunch fees, there would be no impact on the district’s budget.

She added that none of what she envisions would be possible without the district’s 17 food service employees.

“We truly have talented people here,” she said.