Live Oak High School celebrated the opening of a renovated culinary classroom Sept. 30, a $260,000 upgrade the Morgan Hill Unified School District says will give students in its Foods & Culinary pathway a professional-grade space to learn cooking and catering.
Foods & Culinary is one of more than 30 Career Technical Education pathways offered by the school district, Superintendent Carmen Garcia said, and more than 90% of its high school students are enrolled in a CTE course.
The project turned a dated kitchen into a space with new flooring, new stoves and ventilation hoods, and other new equipment, Garcia said. The renovation includes two rooms: the kitchen and an adjacent classroom where students go over lessons before practicing them.
“You should have seen how 1970s this kitchen looked,” Garcia said.
Garcia said the district paid for the renovation with district funds. Leal Hospitality, the Morgan Hill-based hospitality firm owned by Frank Leal, is donating about $12,000 for a refrigerator, freezer, washer and dryer, she said.
Garcia said the district deliberately kept proceeds from Grilling for Growth, the annual fundraiser Leal hosts, out of the renovation so the money could go toward student programs. The event brings celebrity chefs to Morgan Hill to cook alongside culinary students, with proceeds supporting the foods pathways at Live Oak and Sobrato high schools. Garcia said it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars since it began two years ago.
“We wanted the Grilling for Growth money, we wanted for that money to be invested in actual programs for the students,” Garcia said. “As a school district we have a responsibility for the facilities.”
The third annual Grilling for Growth is scheduled for Oct. 18. For the first time, Live Oak students will run their own booth in addition to assisting the visiting chefs, Garcia said.
Leal said his company’s interest in the schools is both civic and practical.
“We invest in our future, because it’s a little self-serving for us—we need your help,” he said. “In this valley, where we can grow opportunities, we can grow fruits, vegetables and we can grow our future with these kids.”
The pathway will be led by Miriam Vega, a Morgan Hill city councilmember who was hired this spring as the school’s culinary teacher. Vega, who previously taught in Salinas, said she was hired by MHUSD in April after most of the design was set, and that she organized the kitchen’s layout and equipment.
Vega said beginning students will learn kitchen routines and group work, and the advanced class will focus on catering. Planned lessons include sous vide, grilling and smoking, she said, using two “green eggs,” a type of ceramic grill donated by Leal.
She called the lab the “Culinary Institute of the Acorns,” a nod to the Culinary Institute of America and the school’s mascot.
Vega said she hopes students will eventually run their own catering operation. At her previous school, she said, students scaled recipes to feed up to 600 people at a back-to-school night. Garcia said such a program could cater district events.
“I know our kids can do it, we just have to give them the tools,” Vega said, “and now we have such a beautiful kitchen to do it with.”
Speakers at the ceremony included Morgan Hill Mayor Mark Turner, who called the lab one piece of the district’s “very robust workforce development program,” and school board President John Horner, who said the project reflects a goal he has pursued since joining the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce board in 2012: businesses and schools working together to support students.
Nick Gaich, president of the chamber, said the chamber completed its first summer internship program this year with construction and advanced manufacturing companies and is working with Vega to extend it to culinary arts.
“Relationships absolutely matter,” Gaich said.
