District welcomes donations

Businesses that purchase poultry, lamb, pork or bison during the Carbon County Fair and Rodeo will be able to donate the processed meat to Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2). This information was provided to the CCSD2 Board of Trustees during their July 17 meeting during public comment.

As the Board of Trustees wished all the students participating in the county fair luck, CCSD2 Business Manager Sally Wells took the opportunity to inform the trustees of the recent information.

“Speaking of fair,” said Wells, “Carbon Two will accept donated meat for animals if you know of business people who wanted to donate meat; beef, pork, to a worthy cause, that the school district can accept those animals.”

During the 2017 General Session, the Wyoming Legislature passed the School Protein Enhancement Project Act. Senate File 123 was introduced by Senator Brian Boner (R - Douglas) and co-sponsored by Senators Larry Hicks (R - Baggs) and Ogden Driskill (R - Devils Tower) and Representatives Hans Hunt (R - Newcastle), Tyler Lindholm (R - Sundance) and Albert Sommers (R - Pinedale).

The purpose of the legislation, which passed the House 60-0 and the Senate 23-2-5, is to allow the Wyoming Department of Education to provide financial assistance to school districts “to increase the quantity of Wyoming poultry, lamb, pork, beef or bison used in school lunches.” Having been passed during the 2017 session, the project was in pilot stage for the 2017-2018 school year.

According to the text or the original document, funding would be provided only to pay for the processing costs for the approved protein.

Wells informed the Board of Trustees that the processing could be paid for by CCSD2 using national school district funds. She added that the meat would not have to be processed in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) processing plant, of which there are few in the state. While a USDA plant is an option, meat can also be processed in state approved processing plants.

Among those state processors are Snake River Processing in Baggs and the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Kompac Meat Processing and Weincrich’s Quality Meats in Casper are also on the list.

The Wyoming Department of Education, in a press release from March 3, 2017 announcing the launch of the program, directed anyone interested in donating meat products to contact their local school district. 

The next meeting of the CCSD2 Board of Trustees will be at 6 p.m. on Aug. 19 at the Central Office in Saratoga.