Maybe this year, students at Myhre Elementary School will eat Ugli fruit, a grapefruit-sized citrus fruit.

It's just one of many possibilities available to the school through the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program gives eligible schools money to provide fruit and vegetables during the school day anywhere from once a week to daily.

"We have a snack time, but we noticed some students were not bringing anything," Myhre Principal Jean Hall said.

Myhre participated in the program for the first time last school year, and will continue this coming school year. Schools need to have 50 percent or more of its students participating in the free or reduced lunch program to be eligible.

In the upcoming school year, 62 schools across the state will participate. Other local school participants are Riverside Elementary School in Bismarck, and Custer Elementary School and Mary Stark Elementary School in Mandan.

"It's just a wonderful opportunity," Custer Elementary Principal Susan Atkinson said. "They would taste things they never had tasted before."

Custer also participated in the program last year. The produce would be packaged individually. Depending on the food, it was taken to classrooms on carts, or students came to pick it up.

The program started in North Dakota in 2008 with 25 schools. As more money was made available, more schools were able to be served. Schools are funded at $75 per student. The school reserves 10 percent of the money to cover administrative costs and supplies. The rest is used to purchase produce that can be served during the school day.

At Myhre, there are refrigerators in classrooms to store the fruit until snack time. This way, the teachers have flexibility when they can have snack time, Hall said. Usually, a few well known fruits or vegetables were included with smaller samples of lesser-known fruits and vegetables.

"It's been marvelous," Hall said. "At first kids did not want it."

Now, they have favorites, like blueberries; and they ventured to try radishes, cauliflower and asparagus.

The program requires fruits and vegetables to be served raw, and only vegetables can be served with low-fat dips. The fruit cannot be made into smoothies or mixed into trail mix or cottage cheese. The produce cannot be canned, frozen or dried.

Schools are encouraged to partner with local grocers to provide the produce. In Valley City and Jamestown, the schools are working with the local farmers' market. Sometimes the schools arrange with suppliers to prepare the food to be served.

"In rural communities, this takes the burden off the kitchen staff," said Kaye Knudson, a child nutrition specialist with child nutrition services with the Department of Public Instruction.

The schools also give weekly lessons on nutrition along with the produce. As part of the program, schools are given free educational materials and a list of Web sites with nutrition information.

Sometimes, the fruit or vegetables fit in with classroom lessons, and other times teachers use supplemental material to teach nutrition at Custer.

Schools can choose how often they distribute produce. The only restriction is to not give it out during the breakfast and lunch times, which are subsidized by the National School Lunch program.

The produce offered is seasonal, and it must be grown in the United States, unless it is not available, such as bananas.

"That's one of the biggest challenges, especially this year with the weather," Knudson said about the availability of fresh produce.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)