Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the School Meals topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
KSDE to test revised Healthy Kansas menus; board delays a related AV contract for more review
Summary
KSDE proposed revising Healthy Kansas menus to a six-week cycle and piloting recipes in three districts (two $15,000 stipends; one $12,000). Board members asked operational and sourcing questions; a separate consent-item contract for audiovisual services (Encore Global) was pulled and postponed to gather vendor/RFP information.
KSDE Director of Child Nutrition Kelly Cheney described a comprehensive revision of the "Healthier Kansas" school menus—moving from an eight-week cycle to a six-week cycle, incorporating harvest-of-the-month local-food recipes, and standardizing recipes, production records and purchasing guides. Cheney said KSDE planned pilot recipe testing in three sites (USD 336 Holton; USD 260 Cheney; Manhattan Catholic as a smaller site) with stipends to offset labor and short-term food-cost increases while testing new recipes.
KSDE proposed two $15,000 stipends and one $12,000 stipend for pilot sites and said testing would include on-site training, technical assistance and post-test debriefs. Cheney said the effort aims both to improve acceptance and to inform culinary training and equipment needs. She also described plans for summer regional trainings and a culinary-coach model to support district implementation.
Board discussion then turned to a separate consent agenda item (contract F) involving audiovisual support for the KSDE in-service conference with an apparent $47,000 line for Encore Global. Board members asked whether the AV contract should be competitively bid or locally sourced; concerns about single-source pricing and hotel-related fees led the Board to delay the contract vote to the next meeting while KSDE researches RFP options and vendor experiences. The menu-testing stipends were presented as part of a USDA formula grant; KSDE said more details and any contract documents would be finalized before December.
