Jacobson secures $30,000 grant to expand school garden program

A $30,000 state grant will help Land to Learn push its SproutEd program into more Orange County classrooms, reaching 2,774 K-3 students across 11 public elementary schools with garden lessons, cooking, nutrition and food-system education.

Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson, who represents Assembly District 104 and grew up in Newburgh, secured the funding for the hands-on program, which Land to Learn says is already active in Newburgh, Beacon and Kingston. For a district centered on Newburgh schools and nearby communities, the money is less a headline-sized windfall than a tightly aimed investment in something teachers can put to work right away.

SproutEd is Land to Learn’s flagship in-school program for the 2025-2026 school year. The organization says it is serving students through monthly lessons that cover gardening, plant science, ecology, cooking and environmental stewardship, with vegetable taste-tests folded into the curriculum. Land to Learn also says the work extends beyond classroom enrichment and into wellness efforts, including promoting fresh produce in cafeterias.

That makes the grant a practical test of value as much as a gesture of support. Spread across the current 2,774 students, the award works out to roughly $11 per child, a sign that this is pilot-sized funding rather than the kind of money that would overhaul district programming. But in a county where schools are constantly asked to educate, feed and support children with limited resources, small public dollars can still buy a visible payoff if they are tied to a program already operating in classrooms.

Land to Learn says its broader work reaches about 3,000 youth each year in the Hudson Valley and currently operates in eleven schools and two after-school programs. The organization frames that work around food justice, community wellness and environmental stewardship, with a focus on high-needs communities where many students are economically disadvantaged and BIPOC.

For Jacobson, the grant also fits his own local profile. He is the Newburgh native and Newburgh Free Academy graduate now serving in the New York State Assembly, and the funding keeps public money close to home while directing it toward schools that can show immediate results. The question now is not whether the grant sounds good on paper, but whether it helps move SproutEd from a promising classroom supplement into a broader part of how Orange County children learn about health, food and the environment.