On Aug. 28, 2024 USD 497 was given a $100,000 Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure grant to open a new bakery that will be established inside of Community Connections at Pinckney.
Community Connections houses a variety of resources for the district such as the Community Transition Program, Alternative Suspension Program and secondary therapeutic classrooms with the bakery being added at the start of the 2025 fall semester. The bakery aims to l benefit the district by offering healthy locally sourced foods to school cafeterias while saving money by reducing cost for district school lunches in the process.
USD 497 Farm 2 School Coordinator Pantaleon Florez said the idea behind starting the bakery was to use the resources they already had to create an infrastructure that benefits the Lawrence community.
“The bakery is the product of many different people’s dreams and aspirations coming together. The Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure grant through the Kansas Department of Agriculture was certainly a major financial catalyst in getting the bakery off the ground,” Florez said. “From my perspective, the idea was also borne out of an understanding that if we have a facility like the kitchen at Pinckney, we should find the best possible public-oriented use for that infrastructure.”
USD 497 Director of Nutrition and Wellness Julie Henry was one of the school officials who approved this new opening. Henry said the goal of this project is to help cut costs while improving the taste and quality of school meals.
“We are always looking for cost-effective ways to improve the quality of school meals both in terms of taste and nutritional quality,” Henry said. “Baking items from scratch in-house will give us more control of the bread products that we serve and will allow us to serve better products.”
Although improving school meals is the focus of the project, the broader community will benefit. The bakery will support farmers by purchasing local grain.
“Our goal is to purchase 51% of the grains used in the bakery from local producers. This means we will be buying from local farmers and the money that we will spend will go right back into our local economy,” Henry said. “The bakery will also serve as a learning laboratory for students enrolled in the C-Tran program. These students will gain job and cooking skills by making grain items and selling them.”
The bakery site — at what was previously Pinckney Elementary and which now houses Community Connections — will also offer learning opportunities to members of the Community Transitions Program. This program helps young adults develop workplace skills in a real job setting.
Florez said that this opening could bring in more opportunities for development in district schools and in the Lawrence community.
With the bakery having the biggest impact in school cafeterias, junior Camille Lee was given the opportunity to share what she thought of the new opening.
“I don’t know about other students, but I personally will be excited to have local options available for breakfast and lunch,” Lee said. “I think this is a good step towards a more environmentally friendly school district. However, I believe that the district’s budget could have been used for something more impactful.”
On March 12, one of President Donald Trump’s executive actions resulted in the freezing of the grant. Although the funding may not go through, the district still plans on opening with or without the grant.
“We are unsure if we will get the grant funds for the bakery at this time. The district has decided to continue the bakery project, even if the grant funding is permanently cut by the current administration,” Henry said.
