While it won’t exactly be home cooking, it will be cooking “in house.”
The Sitka School Board on Wednesday (3-5-25) decided to drop its half-million dollar contract with Nana Management for food service in local schools, and cook up its own menus.
Superintendent Deidre Jenson told the board the savings would amount to about $150,000 per year.
Board member Tom Williams applauded the move.
“I think we’re going to have quality food, based on what I’ve seen so far from our district cook,” said Williams. “And I think last year we heard lots of testimony about how inadequate the food was that we were receiving. So thank you so much for finding a way to put this together.”
The district food program will use the Sitka High School kitchen, and deliver meals to the middle school and the two elementary schools. Jenson said the logistics had yet to be worked out. Sitka’s alternative school, Pacific High, will continue to make its own lunches, as it has for the last several years.
Board president Phil Burdick is a former teacher and principal at Pacific High. He credited Pacific High’s culinary program for showing the district a path to success.
“And with their vision,” said Burdick, “(Staff) created this foods program at Pacific High School that has now grown to this garden, and is a model for how we’re going to feed the rest of our students. And so I’m really, really just so happy to see this happening.
The program will be staffed with a full-time Food Service Coordinator, two full-time cooks, and two half-time cooks. Students interested in the culinary program can work in the kitchens as interns.
Costs of the meals should be comparable to what students pay now, although Superintendent Jenson said there was a grant pending with the US Department of Agriculture’s Educational Nutrition Program (SCALES) which could lower costs.
The final vote was unanimous. “Better food for less money,” said board member Steven Morse. “Who’s not in favor of that?”
