Mischa Johnson, Director, WRVSU Child Nutrition Program
photo of mischa

Mischa Johnson has been part of Child Nutrition since 2008 where she started as a Main Cook in another district and where she discovered her passion for feeding children. Sh came to WRVSU in 2020, coming into the organization as the Child Nutrition Program manager for the Bethel and Royalton schools. In 2021, she became a Child Nutrition Coordinator and helped lead the effort to bring together seven separate breakfast and lunch programs across eight WRVSU schools into one unified Child Nutrition Program.

In 2024, Mischa became the Child Nutrition Director, where she oversees and supports the entire Child Nutrition Team and continues to look for new ways to expand and improve meal opportunities for students and families. She has helped grow the program to include after school supper programs, providing students with nutritious meals at the end of the school day, as well as expanded summer meal programs that reach children throughout the WRVSU communities.

A strong advocate for local foods, Mischa is passionate about connecting students with fresh, nutritious foods from Vermont farms while supporting local farmers and the communities WRVSU serves. She believes school meals are about much more than food, they are an important part of creating healthy, connected school communities.

Outside of her work, Mischa is a mom of three adult children, grandmother to six, and proud dog mom to Blue. Originally from Cape Cod, she now calls Montpelier, Vermont, home.

You can reach Mischa at mjohnson@wrvsu.org

Summer Meals 2026

As we wrap up the Summer Meal Programs, I would like to share that we served a total of 62,787 meals this summer!

11,911 to the One Planet campers in the form of congregate meals/ weekend meal bags, and 50,876 meals were distributed at our non-congregate sites.

Just about 20,000 more meals than during summer 2025.

I am incredibly grateful and proud of our Child Nutrition team, and thank you for supporting us and our vision!

-Mischa Johnson

Our Team

Bethel: Alyssa Jarvis ajarvis@wrvsu.org, Laina Robinson lrobinson@wrvsu.org and Susan Henderson shenderson@wrvsu.org

Chelsea: Casey Knudson cknudson@wrvsu.org

Newton: Gretchen Hewes ghewes@wrvsu.org

Rochester: Doug Kennedy dkennedy@wrvsu.org

Royalton: Cathy Sample csample@wrvsu.org, Amanda Cross across@wrvsu.org, Linann Perry lperry@wrvsu.org and, Chuck Howe chowe@wrvsu.org

Sharon: Jill Dorman jdorman@wrvsu.org and Kelley Flood-Hammond kflood-hammond@wrvsu.org

Stockbridge: Natasha Springer nspringer@wrvsu.org

Tunbridge: Pam Zug pzug@wrvsu.org, Virginia Fifield vfifield@wrvsu.org

Mischa Johnson, WRVSU Child Nutrition Director: mjohnson@wrvsu.org

Child Nutrition Program Overview

The WRVSU Child Nutrition Program is a model program that emphasizes scratch cooking, local food purchasing, and food security. The program provides nutritious meals year-round through breakfast and lunch during the school year, as well as summer meals and an afterschool supper program, ensuring students and families have access to healthy food throughout the year.

Scope and purpose

WRVSU Child Nutrition Program serves all eight schools within WRVSU's six districts, reaching close to 1,300 students and serving an average of approximately 1,175 school meals each day. Our overall goal goes beyond simply providing meals: the program seeks to make healthy, high-quality food accessible to children while supporting their educational experience and reducing food insecurity.

Farm-to-school and local foods

A particularly notable part of WRVSU's model is its commitment to farm-to-school purchasing. The program continued expanding local purchasing. WRVSU began purchasing local beef from Roma Butchery at the start of the 2025 school year, adding it to other locally sourced foods. Local purchasing is a way both to support area farms and to help students understand where their food comes from. Our increased focus on local foods since 2023 coincided with an almost 20% increase in lunch participation, roughly 120 additional students eating school lunch each day.

Year-round food access

WRVSU also addresses food access when school is not in regular session. In the first week of summer 2025, WRVSU distributed more than 1,000 meals at Bethel Elementary School alone. Its USDA-affiliated summer program offered free breakfast and lunch to children 18 and younger without requiring income information or advance enrollment. Our Summer Meal program in 2026 provided over 60,000 meals to the children of our communities.

Overall, our WRVSU's Child Nutrition Program is a district-wide, year-round nutrition and food-security program with a strong scratch-cooking and farm-to-school focus. It combines federal and state child-nutrition programs with local purchasing and community partnerships to increase students' access to nutritious meals while increasing school-food spending toward supporting our community and Vermont agriculture.

Civil Rights Requirements of the Federal Child Nutrition Programs

School Food Authorities and program sponsors are required to administer child nutrition programs in accordance with all non-discrimination laws, regulations, instructions, policies, and guidance. This includes annual training on civil rights in child nutrition programs.

Notice of Beneficiaries

Agency of Education Non-Discrimination Policy

Under Vermont state law, it is unlawful to refuse, withhold from, or deny to any person any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of the place of public accommodation because of the race, creed, color, national origin, citizenship, immigration status, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity of that person. 9 V.S.A. § 4502(a). For more information about these rights, visit https://education.vermont.gov/learning/nondiscrimination-policies#usda-english

USDA Civil Rights Non-discrimination Statement

https://education.vermont.gov/nondiscrimination-policies#usda-english