 Good morning all. Mr. Mayor, I am Christopher Chacarico, Senior Executive Director of the New York City Public Schools Office of Food and Nutrition Services. And at this time, I'd like to welcome to the audience Chancellor David Banks. Thank you, gentlemen. This is a special day as we kick off the New York City Public Schools' Chefs in Schools initiative. It's been a long time coming, and we're very happy to begin this work. Last year, we developed several recipes with the Chef's Council. And we are very thankful to our partners at Wellness in the Schools and Nancy Easton. Please give them a nice round of applause. Thanks to this Mayor and this Chancellor, we are transforming the way we feed children in New York City. And without further ado, I'd like to invite the Mayor up here to speak a little bit about that. Mayor Adams. So much really, really excited as I look out and see, you know, the food service workers who are here. When I was in school, our office were not that cool, you know? And my mom was a food service worker. And mommy did more than serve food. She, you know, there was just a, in every spoonful, there was a spoonful of just really love and commitment. And she treated each one of the children at Amstead Daycare Center as her own. And those children walk past your serving locations or how, what the Chancellor is doing, to really change the structure of our cafeterias and turn them into experience. We all want experiences when we go out. And what we are doing around food, this whole team, is just, this is just so bold. And just when people talk about reimagining schools, they don't really focus on the power of food. And I've been talking about it for some time. And, you know, sometimes, you know, you lose votes when you talk about taking away someone's hot dog and pizza and some of those other things, but it's the right thing to do. I waited until I was in my mid-50s before being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The doctor told me I was going to be blind in a year. He said I was going to lose some fingers and toes because of the late stage of my diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol was high, had an ulcer. They said I was going to be on medication the rest of my life. I walked into my doctor's office not taking any medicine. And I walked out with nine different pills. You know, I felt like Dwayne Reed by the time I walked out of here. And, you know, I just really believed that I needed a fighting chance. And it was amazing that when I went home and googled, reversing my diabetes and not living with my diabetes, all this information came up about food. And just by changing my diet, changing what I was eating, my vision came back, my nerve damage went away, my ulcer went away, my blood pressure normalized. In all those years, I thought it was my DNA. And it wasn't my DNA, it was my dinner. It was what I was eating. And that's the mission that I have been on because food is not only connected to our physical anatomy. It is connected to our emotional stability at the same time. And we started this journey several years ago with my team. One of them is here now, Rachel Axerson, who has been with me throughout this entire journey. Criss-crossing the globe. And if you ever want to lose friends, start telling them to stop eating something that they eat. Or, you know, no one invites you to dinner anymore. They call me the fool police. But what we want to do is not to criticize or critique. We want to inform. We want people just to make the choices that they need to make. When I look at my five siblings, each one of them are going through some major health care crises, from cancer to early signs of dementia, to just chronic diseases. And I slowly introduced them to a healthy lifestyle. And if someone would have just given us this information earlier, it would have changed the trajectory of my mom, who I lost two years ago, to diabetes and heart disease and high cholesterol. And all of you, I'm really sure if you were to close your eyes and do a reflection, every one of you knows someone that's going through a chronic disease if you're not going through it yourself. And you know, when you have a chronic disease, it hijacks your life. You're no longer who you are. You sit down at the keyboard and you're thinking about that next test. You're thinking about the next operation. You're thinking about hospice care for your family member. You know, I think about my older sister now, who she's just got admitted into the hospital a few days ago. She has been going in and out of the hospital for the last few months. And how empowering it is to something simple as changing your diet. And that's what you guys and ladies are going to do. You are going to take these children, who the numbers of, I think it was 70%, Rachel, the last number, 70% of our 12-year-olds have early signs of heart disease. That's just unimaginable. And it's not easy. Food is like crack. You get hooked on food. And when I changed my diet, I used to wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about fried chicken. Man, you know, it's amazing. You just feel addicted. And then our babies are inundated with all of this bad food everywhere they go. You go to my affluent communities. They have whole food. Go to the South Bronx and Harlem. They have junk food. Every public housing, you see all the junk food that's surrounding them. We wonder why our children can't sit still and why they can't learn. We're pumping them up with processed oil filled, sugar filled, unnatural, unhealthy food. And then all of a sudden, Superman and Superwoman come around with their gray and white chef jackets. And we're going to change the dynamic in a very bold way. The country will follow us. We're on the right side of history. We're on the right side of history. And so Nancy Easton and the whole wellness and school team, we've been rocking with them for a little bit. We've been doing our thing around healthy food. It's the foundation and the basis of life, this new program of chefs in the schools program. Just your look. Just your look, you know, your jackets, your cats. That alone is going to tell children something different is happening here. Just your look. It says something is going to happen differently. And over the next two years, 60 wellness in the schools chefs will offer individualized culinary training to all our school workers and 1,200 school builders. This would help you guys develop the skills that you need to prepare new plant-based culturally relevant meals cooked from scratch. And we are launching this for with all our public schools students. Food must look good. They must taste good. That's my theme music. I normally walk on to Jay-Z. I gave him an award last night. It was good seeing him. And you know what's interesting about food, Rachel? When Beyonce decided she was going to go plant-based, millions of people started looking at it. That's the power of incredible messengers. So these meals will provide more than just nutrition. They would expose our students to flavorful and healthy eating, because food have to taste good. No one wants to eat boring food. You know, it has to taste good. Like you think about Miles, a food service worker at PS 165. This story, I enjoyed this story so much. Fatima, an inquisitive, an energetic third grader who came up to him on the line and said, I only want salad today. That says it all. And he talks about how impactful it was looking in our eyes, understanding that our children are thinking differently. And you know what? These babies are ready. They are ready. They want to grow good food. They want to see it. They want to put it on their plate. They want to eat it. They want to try something different. And you are at the forefront of it, right here in the city. This is the greatest city on the globe. So that makes you the greatest school food employees on the globe. That makes us the greatest public educational system on the globe. Let's make it happen. Let's heal young people one plate at a time, one meal at a time. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Your vision has inspired us to do this work. With that said, Chancellor Banks has tasked us with reimagining the dining experience in all of New York City schools. Not only that, but he's allowing us, supporting us to create these healthy, plant-based, innovative recipes to have children eating healthy in all of the buildings we serve food in. With that said, I'd like to invite the Chancellor of the New York City Schools, David Banks. Morning, everybody. We can try one more time. Morning, everybody. It's good to see you all. The Mayor's feeling good. We came in. The sun is out. I mean, we were under the rain clouds. Assemblymen for so long. And it starts to have an effect on your psyche. It really does. So I'm very appreciative to have the sun out and warm weather. It feels good. And it feels good to be here with each and every one of you today. This is a beautiful facility. It's a beautiful, like, old school auditorium. And the energy that we felt even as we walked into the lobby, right, Mayor? You could feel it. A tone gets set when you walk into a school from the very beginning. From the folks who greet you at the front door. And so I want to say thank you to everybody. It's Principal Nacotri here with our school principal. Where is he? Principal Nacotri, thank you so much for welcoming us here to your school this morning. You cannot have a great school without a great school principal. And I see our superintendent here as well, Gary. Thank you so much, man, for being here for your leadership as well. I'm going to be very brief. We are here in so many ways with this level of innovation because of our mayor. I'm a person who believes in healthy eating. I could do better. But I get it. I'm not a person that's locked in on old habits. Like, don't tell me about changing my dietary habits. I believe in health. I believe in taking care of yourself. Many people don't know that when I was in the 11th grade, I started reading books myself about healthy eating. And one book in particular by Dick Gregory, political activist, comedian, but he became a health czar as well. And it was called Cooking with Mother Nature. And because of my reading that book in the 11th grade, I stopped eating red meat on my own. Nobody else told me to do it. I was just educating myself. And I've not had any red meat since the 11th grade. I have raised four children. None of them have ever had it. And they never missed it. They never ate any pork. There's a lot of processed stuff that they never had because they don't miss it because they never had it. And I think that's what the mayor is trying to say. If we in fact want to change these health challenges that we have in our society, you have to start as early as possible. And so that's what this is all about. For every one of us who are adults in this room, who all went to school, from the beginning of time, kids have always complained about lunch in the lunchroom. Let's not act like it's anything new. That's always been the case. But what the mayor is talking about is how to ensure healthy eating. But how do we make it something where the kids don't dread going into the lunchroom to eat? You can make it sexy. You really can. And it can be fun. As the mayor said earlier, he said, you know, it's got to taste good. But I also said to one of my friends here with the chef, it's got to look good, too, on the plate. That's the first thing. And before you taste it, your eyes are being introduced to it. And so all of that matters. And that is why we brought so many of you together as chefs and celebrity chefs to come together to help us. Help us make this appeal. Help us make this something that everybody would want to be a part of. I'm so appreciative deeply, really, for the mayor's leadership on this. I'm just trying to activate as much as I can on his vision for doing this. Because as I came into this office as Chancellor, this was not necessarily my major priority. It had a lot of issues that we have in our school system. But I'm so glad that he has been so steadfast on this because you can dramatically change lives for the better over the long haul when we get it right. So many of you have spent the last year creating these scratch-based menus and really putting your best thinking and your best skills together to come up with those menus. And so we are thrilled now that we're getting ready to go to phase two. And Kate, Nancy, and everybody who's been really driving this and leading this work, thank you. Because when we think about professional development in our schools, it's always been about teachers and reading and math. A level of significant professional development for our food service workers to take their work to another level that's never been done before. Not like this. Not like this. That all is part of the re-imagined school experience. Because if kids are walking into the cafeteria and saying, I just want to have salad today, think about how cool that is. That's transformative. Who says that? And you're right, man, the power of celebrity as well. So when the Beyonce's of the world is so many of these celebrities who now become vegans or more healthy eaters, young people pay attention to that. And they also pay attention to our mayor, who they see every day, who is a celebrity in his own right. He don't have as many followers as Beyonce, but that's OK. He got more than enough. And the kids in New York pay attention. And they hear it. And it matters. And so bringing all of you together, we can't thank you enough for what you've done and what you're getting ready to do. Rachel, thank you. Rachel Atchison, I met Rachel before we even came into office. And she's been a right hand for the mayor. But on this issue, this has been her issue. This is her passion point. She believes deeply in this. And you have to have people who believe deeply in that that it's actually going to push something to the finish line. We're all here because of you, Rachel. Your passion for this, coupled with our mayor, you got him to write that book. He put the word out. And it made it the values that the mayor says are important. People will move based on that. And we're all here today because of that. And kids' lives are going to be better. They're going to be healthier because of that. All of you as our chefs, thank you. All of our ambassadors, Chris, who are in your office, who've been working to do this here, thank you. God bless you. We're going to actually transform the lives of kids in ways that you may not appreciate today. But you'll see it over the long term. And a lot of times, elected officials don't invest in things like this because you may not see the payoff until later on. But we have a leader who said I'm making the investment in the long term because it's the right thing for kids. And we can make it sexy at the same time. So let's go do it. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much, sir. We owe both of you a thank you because you are allowing us to do this work to improve school menus across the system. So thank you very much. I also want to recognize some other folks in the audience. Kate McKenzie, Mayor's Office of Food Policy, Emma Videra, the New York City Public Schools COO, Deputy Chancellor, who also give us the support and allow us to do this work. Now let's talk a little bit about this work and what we are doing. We have cook ambassadors across all the districts in New York City that are going to be working closely with the chefs in schools as well as all schools in their districts. So I'd like to bring up at this time Lisa Davison. Lisa Davison, our coordinator of kitchen learning and development. Lisa. Good morning, everyone. So it's having the opportunity to really share in our accomplishments and get together that make me really appreciate the magnitude of the work that we're doing here together. And I know I speak for the majority of the people in this room when I say that it really is about the outcome and seldom about the process. Whatever the task is, we get it done, right? So I'd like to take a moment, an opportunity to celebrate this process and our work together and how it'll shape our future in our office. So in our collaboration with Wellness in the Schools and the Chef Council, we are beginning to do something that's never been done before. And the magnitude of that as the mayor mentioned and the chancellor mentioned is gonna be felt nationwide, okay? We are changing the way students eat and how they think about food. And that is no small task. So thank you for your continued support in our work and your belief in our vision. It's felt throughout this entire organization. And to my Cook ambassadors, not only are you going to be asked to continue to serve the 32 districts in which you live, but your efforts in creating recipes, continuing to uplift others is gonna pioneer the way this organization imagines professional development and how we continue into the future and how we affect the students that we serve. And you do it all with a smile, every single challenge, and I so appreciate that. And to our mayor and our chancellor, everything we do for these students is because we have your support. And reimagining what our cafeteria experience is gonna be is the foundation. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart and from our office because I know that with your vision, we're gonna continue to change the world. And this is a national celebration. Thank you. Appreciate those words, Lisa. Now, our last speaker, chef Turner. Where is he? See him, he's gonna talk a little bit about the chefs in school's work. Thank you for the warm welcome and good morning. First, I wanna say it's an honor and a pleasure to come and speak before you today, Mr. Mayor. My name is Turner. Some of my friends call me royalty here in New York City, but I'm here to talk about wits. I'm a chef with wellness in the schools here today on behalf of my fellow chefs in the schools. Although we've only just begun in September, I can personally attest to the impact of this nonprofit initiative. I've been assigned to two schools, PS310 and 160 based in Brooklyn, where we can see the excitement beaming from the children's eyes at the sheer sight of a new dish. Even more so, it is inspiring and reassuring to know that these recipes are plant-based, scratch-cooked, and culturally relevant to the student body of New York City. As a child, I personally adored my fair share of obstacles, navigating life as a husky kid. Now, health and wellness is of the utmost importance to me. And this all started with the foods I decided to eat, and that keyword is decided. At PS160, the impression of a chef in a public school kitchen has already begun to produce positive results. Our lead cook, Margaret, has begun to grow fond of rallying her team together each morning for a wellness check, where we break down the day's workload, and we also just take that time to say hi and check in on one another. This is one shining example of a lasting impression our work provides. But why, you might ask? Well, besides growing up with a lack of nutrition, we believe that the engine to these children's success is fueled by whole and nutritious foods. It starts in the cafeteria. Although it is simple to spill open a bag of chicken bites and call it a day, we aim to challenge the status quo and decide once and for all, pizza is not a vegetable. In the beginning, we were pushed to believe that the kids don't want vegetables. They don't like it. I come to find that this cannot be further from the truth. In fact, they are craving them. It is up to us as responsible adults and leaders of our community to give these students access and knowledge to real food. Thank you so much. Appreciate that, Chef Turner. It's really important that we always ground us up in the work that we are trying to do to make the lives of New York City children better. I have two small asks before we actually stop this and move our way to the back. The main ask is going to be if I can ask everyone to stand up. We knew it was gonna be hard to get a picture so we figured everyone stay right in place. We got a photographer right behind us to get a nice picture with all of us to commemorate and start this work. Thank you very much. Chancellor and Mayor, there are some samples in the back of the food that we're serving. Thank you. Thank you guys. Actually...