Aromas-San Juan Unified School District trustees cooked up ideas for new ways to use a state-of-the-art culinary arts classroom.
“That building and that equipment is now available for us to use in a manner the school district deems meaningful,” Superintendent Ruben Zepeda told the Free Lance in an interview this week.
Trustees at last week’s meeting discussed using a classroom at Anzar High School for catering prep or adult education in addition to the normal high school culinary classes for regular students. Previously, the building was available for use, but tools bought with Career Technical Education funds could be used only for CTE classes, the superintendent explained. Under the new Local Control Funding Formula, these restrictions don’t apply.
The space could help prepare families, adults and aspiring chefs to work in restaurants—“kind of like a culinary arts school,” Zepeda said.
It could be modeled after one in Salinas near Fremont Peak, which operates a restaurant while training students to cook, he said. The district is also looking to possibly rent the facilities to people with catering businesses, though the district would need to look into considerations such as supervision and insurance, the superintendent said.
Zepeda isn’t sure a culinary program would earn the district money since it would have to hire instructors with certifications, he said. Programs always start small, and it might be a multiyear effort, the superintendent said.
“It may be a wash,” he said.
Any classes offered to the community would probably be open to adults and upper-class students that took the school’s culinary arts class and saw this as the next step in a career, Zepeda explained.
