Not that long ago, most San Francisco public schoolyards were sealed in concrete. Now, vegetables and fruit trees are growing in more than 20 schools around the city, where children learn about science and the environment through hands-on gardening and cooking activities.

It sounds a lot like Berkeley's Edible Schoolyard, but it's called Education Outside, a program that is expanding its presence to 22 schools in the current school year, which began last week. That's up from 10 schools last year.

Meanwhile, the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture or CUESA, which runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, is doubling the number of workshops it offers to local school groups, who get to interact with farmers, shop for and cook vegetables, and then sit down to eat them.

Both programs are tackling two big challenges facing California schoolchildren: health problems related to poor nutrition, and lagging science education.

"Any extra science curriculum is like gold for us," says fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Partika of Jefferson Elementary in the Sunset District. The school has had an Education Outside instructor for the past two years.

The children leave their regular classroom to learn about evaporation, decomposition and photosynthesis while planting butterfly-friendly flowers or weeding a bed of kale.

The program is a result of the city's voter-passed Proposition A Greening Program, which allotted $100,000 to $150,000 to each elementary school in the district, plus 10 middle and high schools, with the goal of "greening" schoolyards by improving waste and energy management, or planting trees and gardens.

Education Outside instructors, who are trained in the state's science curriculum, are placed in schools that have completed their greening build-out; the goal is to have them in 50 schools by 2016.

"We saw it as sort of the golden opportunity for these outdoor spaces," says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, founder and executive director. "They're wonderful to have but they need to have a real reason for existing to be fully used by the community."

Depending on the size of the school, children may visit the outdoor classroom as often as once a week. At Jefferson, the vegetable production is so great that the students sometimes sell the excess to their parents at a mini farmers' market.

At CUESA, teachers can bring in school groups for free two-hour workshops during the regular Tuesday or Thursday farmers' markets. After a short lesson, small groups head into the market with a $6 budget. They return to the market's cooking school to chop the vegetables they selected into a savory topping for homemade crackers.

"We started with a bruschetta recipe. But if you tell a kid to buy this basil, this tomato or this onion, it's not as exciting if they get to try 10 different peppers and squash and decide on their own," says program director Elianna Friedman.

CUESA has an additional program at three public high schools called Schoolyard to Market, where students learn to maintain a vegetable garden and then sell the produce at the Saturday farmers' market.

The lessons at both CUESA and Education Outside tie into math, for example when calculating the size of a recipe for a vegetable rice pilaf.

They even tie into English instruction. After her students harvested a giant zucchini last week, and then brought it into the classroom, Partika assigned them to write stories about its adventures.

"It's my classroom pet until it starts to go bad on us," she says.

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