The Burlington School District is giving its students another option to consider as they look to their futures. Starting this fall, they can learn how to cook in a commercial grade kitchen.
The school board hired S&G Construction out of Burlington to build the kitchen and a small cafe in the industrial arts building at a cost of around $600,000.
Business Manager Chris Stensland said the expanded culinary arts program will be housed in the former automotive shop to meet safety requirements.
"We (have) to do it in the I.A. building because it is fire-rated, the main building is not," said Stensland. "We have to put in fire suppression hoods and so forth for the commercial gas stoves. When it is all said and done, it is basically a position that will prepare students to go on into the culinary arts field if they so choose to."
This project is more than a year in the making. Bids were requested last spring for the commercial grade kitchen, which was estimated to cost about $420,000. The district anticipated using an estate donation to cover about $125,000 and sales tax revenue to cover the rest. But when the low bid came in closer to $600,000, the school board put the project on hold.
Stensland said the new kitchen was brought back up this spring because the district received another estate donation, this time of around $250,000.
"Again, it was to be used for improvements at the high school," said Stensland, "The high school again asked the board to direct that money to the program."
Stensland said with about $375,000 in estate donations, the school board felt comfortable accepting the low bid from S&G Construction. She said the commercial kitchen should be in place before the start of the 2015/2016 school year, along with a cafe that will be open to the public.
"So that they can actually, on a very, very small scale, 4 tables I think, serve the public the meals they prepared and actually run it as a restaurant," said Stensland. "So now we can not only have the culinary arts students, but we may pull in business students who want to learn the business side of running a restaurant."
