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Board approves $1.52 million consulting contract with Sedexo for food-service support
Summary
After a detailed presentation and extended Q&A on facilities, menu quality and speed of service, the board approved a $1,523,289 consulting and purchasing services contract with Sedexo for the 2025–26 school year; the district retains program control under state rules.
The Jefferson School District board voted unanimously to approve a consulting and purchasing-services contract with Sedexo totaling $1,523,289 for the 2025–26 school year.
Sedexo representatives Martha Aro and Caitlyn Busy presented highlights of a proposal intended to support the district’s child-nutrition operations through procurement, menu planning, student engagement and regulatory compliance. They emphasized that, under California law, the district retains full program control and Sedexo’s role is limited to consulting and purchasing support. “It is your program 100%. Sedexo is not managing your program,” Aro told trustees.
The presentation described approaches to improve menu quality, reduce packaging-related quality loss (for example, serving items that degrade in packaging via alternate service methods), expand culturally diverse offerings (more Asian entrees were cited) and preserve weekly fresh-fruit-and-vegetable servings. Sedexo also proposed tools such as NutriSlice software for menus and student feedback and recommended taste tests and student voting to guide menu choices.
Trustees used the extended Q&A to probe operational constraints and trade-offs: facility capacity and the central-kitchen prepackaging model limit scratch cooking at some sites; current labor levels support roughly one to two scratch-cooked meals weekly in the central kitchen and middle-school kitchens do more from-scratch preparations. Board members and Sedexo discussed speed-of-service, POS-timing data to measure line length, and options to add additional lunch periods at busier sites.
Sedexo and district staff described a funding mechanism to allow the district to cover higher-cost specialty produce or rotating fresh-fruit options when outside grant funding (such as prior local-food-for-schools funding) is no longer available.
After questions and comments, a trustee moved to approve the contract. The motion carried by voice vote with no recorded dissents.
