Rachel Biccum, a fifth-grader in Chico, California, was sick and tired of school lunches, so she decided to take action. She handed out fliers to her classmates, promoting a boycott. "No more bad lunches!" the flier stated. Rachel also encouraged fellow students to boycott the cafeteria and bring their lunches from home. They told school officials, "get rid of the processed junk, we want more fresh foods."

For Rachel and friends to ask for more fresh foods is encouraging news, since childhood obesity rates are skyrocketing. [A recent report in the Journal of the National Medical Association found that between 1980 and 2000, the prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents nearly tripled.]

But you know, there's another way to provide fresh food at school, and that's to grow it. School gardens are sprouting up all over the country. A growing success story, if you will...

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One such garden, the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California, is one of the first and most successful school garden programs. Students in grades 6 to 8 prepare garden beds, plant seeds, tend crops, and harvest the food. Teachers love it because the garden blends beautifully into the school's curriculum.

Now outdoor gardens are great, this is true, but indoor gardens work, too. If you're a teacher or a parent, you need to know about GrowLab, which is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Gardening Association. The program donates indoor gardening kits to selected schools around the country. The GroLab kit comes with lights, trays, instructions, seeds, potting soil--all the stuff you need to grow a garden indoors.

The GroLab program also provides audio-visual aids and course outlines. I mean, if you think a moment, you can link gardening to every subject--science, math, history, social studies. And kids learn invisible things like patience, responsibility, and greater self-confidence and self-esteem.

By the way, GroLab kits comes in all sizes for schools as well as home use. For more information go to kidsgardening.com. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., senators Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa and Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska just submitted legislation called the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2007. The goal is to ensure that all foods sold in schools--whether in a vending machine or in the cafeteria--meets the new nutritional standards.

For Rachel Biccum that could mean printing new fliers that read, "We love our cafeteria food!"