2026-10-06T16:11:23Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34027461 2026-09-29T19:32:41Z category_26173 category_25378 category_27619 item_type_11 month_year_09_2026

Hungry for Good Jobs: The State of the School Nutrition Workforce in Wisconsin Jennifer Gaddis (25138726) Sara Trongone (25138722) Educational administration, management and leadership Food and hospitality services Economic development policy school food workers Wisconsin K-12 food service <p dir="ltr">Healthy school meals continue to be a vital source of nutrition for Wisconsin’s K-12 students, but ongoing challenges with worker recruitment, retention, and compensation make it difficult for school nutrition programs to provide reliable, high quality meals. To examine statewide trends in school nutrition labor, wages, and compensation, the Healthy School Meals for All (HSM4A) Wisconsin coalition partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to prepare this report. Following prior research on Wisconsin jobs, we use the categories of poverty-wage jobs, low-wage jobs, and good-wage jobs to contextualize the results of our statewide survey. We found the vast majority of non-managerial workers hold low-wage, part-time, 9-month jobs with few employer-provided benefits. Despite wage gains fueled by pandemic-era labor shortages, far too many schools continue to pay their nutrition workers poverty wages. Only one district, Madison Metropolitan School District, now provides good wage jobs to school nutrition employees thanks to a $5 per hour wage increase that was approved in September 2022. Making all jobs in school nutrition “good jobs” is a necessary step toward ensuring that all Wisconsin students have access to the stigma-free nutrition they need to learn and thrive. Wisconsin’s hourly school nutrition workers want access to full-time jobs, employer-provided benefits, and optional summer hours. Investing in these workers is key to unlocking the potential for schools to cook healthy meals from scratch using locally sourced ingredients that keep dollars circulating in Wisconsin’s food and farm economy.</p> 2026-09-29T19:32:41Z Text Online resource 10.6084/m9.figshare.34027461.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Hungry_for_Good_Jobs_The_State_of_the_School_Nutrition_Workforce_in_Wisconsin/34027461 CC BY 4.0