July 20, 2021

What:

 Put aside your preconceived notions of school lunches and step into the kitchen as 60 SAISD cooks and managers train at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) this week 

CIA chef instructors will lead SAISD employees in honing knife skills, kitchen organization, and food preparation fundamentals to ensure freshness and high-quality meals. 

Who:

April Goess, managing director, CIA San Antonio
Jenny Arredondo, SAISD senior executive director of Child Nutrition Services
CIA chefs
SAISD cooks and managers

When:

 July 21 (Wed) – Noon until 2 p.m.

Where:

 The Culinary Institute of America San Antonio, 312 Pearl Parkway, Building 2, Suite 2102

Why:

 “We want to ensure all of our cooks and managers have a high level of training to help meet our department and program standards,” said Jenny Arredondo, senior executive director of SAISD’s Child Nutrition Services department.

For the past four years, CIA and SAISD have been collaborating to take school meals to a new level, creating nutritious meals on a budget, and, most importantly, making sure they taste good, so that kids will want to eat them.

The two institutions first partnered in 2017, to establish a college transfer-credit culinary program. That initiative focused on developing a pipeline of CIA-trained instructors, who in turn, would provide a smooth path to a CIA degree for SAISD students. The following year, the institutions began a chef-led skills enhancement program to inspire and empower child nutrition managers and their staff members, showing them what world-class excellence looks like when preparing a school lunch. This partnership continues today through summer training opportunities for SAISD’s Child Nutrition Services staff. This innovative program is one that can be replicated by other districts.