More chefs? Tapatío? Fresno Unified looks to make school cafeteria lunches better
More chefs? Cooking from scratch? Tapatío?
These were just a few of the ideas tossed around at a recent Fresno Unified board workshop where the district discussed how to improve the quality of meals and reduce food waste in the district — a concern that’s top of mind for many students and their families.
“We should be ensuring that everything that we spend is (on) food that is delicious, that our students eat, (and) that is filling their nutritional needs,” said Board President Veva Islas, who’s been vocal about this issue in her time on the board. “Hungry children do not learn.”
Some of these ideas should soon be coming to a Fresno Unified schools, including several new regional executive chefs — nine, in fact.
Pending board approval at a Feb. 8 meeting, the district is planning to hire one new chef to oversee meals at each of the district’s seven regions, as well as two additional chefs that will be based at the district’s Nutrition Center.
Starting in the 2023-24 school year, the chefs will be tasked with improving presentation and quality of food, increasing the use of “scratch” cooking, and coordinating student taste tests, according to a staff presentation.
The cost of hiring these nine new staffers will be available in Feb. 8’s agenda materials, district spokesperson Diana Diaz said in an email Monday.
This new initiative and others come in response to ongoing dissatisfaction with the quality of meals and levels of food waste from parents and students.
“If there isn’t good nutrition, the children aren’t going to have a good education. They’re not going to be ready to start their day the way they should,” Fresno Unified parent of two Aidee Peñaloza told the board in Spanish at a workshop Wednesday.
Centralized nutrition
Currently, the bulk of the meal prep in Fresno Unified happens at the district’s Nutrition Center, which opened in 2008.
From there, largely pre-packaged meals are shipped to individual schools, warmed up in those schools kitchens as needed, and served.
“The board — that predated us — that voted to actually approve the Nutrition Center,” Islas told The Bee’s Education Lab, “had a lot of legitimate things in mind” when they approved the center that took over a lot of the cooking that had once taken place in kitchens at individual school sites. It helped ensure that all schools served the same quality of meals, for example.
But there were trade-offs, too, as some of the parents who addressed the board Wednesday identified.
Fabiola Felix, who has four children in the district, told the board in Spanish that she hears from her children that their food is sometimes partially frozen.
Peñaloza also shared concerns about how much of this pre-assembled food gets wasted in an interview with the Ed Lab.
“I want to know,” Peñaloza said, “how much money is being wasted” as a result.
These parents aren’t alone in their sentiments about Fresno Unified’s food.
In the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan input sessions last fall, “Better Food for Lunch” was the most common theme among 4,641 students who chimed in on what the district should invest in.
It was also the number one theme among the 728 parents who participated.
These findings also align with the results of another survey of over 2,000 students conducted this month by one of Fresno Unified’s student trustees, Hoover High School senior Joseph Aquino.
“I asked: Do you see a great amount of unopened food in the waste bins?” he said Wednesday. “About 1,608 answered yes.”
FUSD spokesperson Diaz pushed back on some of the claims made about food waste in the district, sharing that the district’s use of the “offer versus serve” model with fruits and vegetables, which allows students to choose between certain menu items, has “significantly reduced food waste” at elementary schools.
The complete results of the survey haven’t been made public yet, Aquino told the Ed Lab. Diaz also confirmed that the district doesn’t currently have plans to make the results public.
Despite the many concerns about Fresno Unified food, the fact remains that some of the district’s families depend on these meals in a county where food insecurity is estimated to affect at least one in 10 people.
Offering ‘culturally responsive’ meals
Doing more cooking from scratch requires both equipment and personnel, staff said Wednesday.
So what about a seemingly simpler solution like providing hot sauce and seasonings? Trustee Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas put forward the idea Wednesday.
District leaders’ response? Even that isn’t as simple as it sounds.
There are strict dietary guidelines in terms of how much salt, for example, schools getting reimbursed by the federal government for meals — which Fresno Unified is — can feed students.
The district runs into some of the same issues when it comes to adding “culturally responsive” foods to the menu, Superintendent Bob Nelson shared.
“I’m taking that up at the policy level statewide, to see where there might be some wiggle room for us,” Nelson said. “The push is: how do you be both culturally responsive ... in a very diverse community like ours, and also be in adherence with the dietary guidelines?”
Islas said that makes the task of ensuring Fresno’s diverse families see their culinary traditions represented in school lunches more difficult.
“A lot of our moms are Latinas,” Islas said. “I know they’re looking for elements that they can relate to in the school meal ... I’m sure the same would be true for our Hmong or our Punjabi (families).”
That’s why it’s critical for parents and others to continue to give their feedback.
“We really do need a stakeholders to stay engaged and involved in this issue, or else, it will kind of just fade to the back,” she said. “It won’t get the priority that it deserves.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
This story was originally published January 24, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
