Culinary arts building completed
CALEXICO – The stakes just got a little higher for the vaunted culinary arts program at Calexico High School.
With multiple state and national competition wins already under its belt, the coming school year will bring the debut of its new culinary arts building.
The newly renovated and seismically-retrofitted 4,960-square-foot facility includes enough state-of-the-art equipment and features to rival the kitchen of any professional chef, said Fernando Nuñez, program educator and chef.
It also means more will be expected of the program’s returning and incoming students.
“With this facility, I’m going to have to work on my curriculum,” Nuñez said.
Nuñez’s remarks were directed at a group of Calexico Unified School District officials and local dignitaries and stakeholders who toured the newly completed facility on Friday.
During the informational tour, Nuñez displayed the facility’s specialized equipment, contrasting the items with the appliances and tools the program’s students previously had at their disposal.
Some of that gleaming new equipment included a blast chiller, roasting oven, rotisseries, pasta maker, fume hoods, heating lamps, icemaker, as well as separate assembly, baking, frying and grilling areas.
“In the past, I used to tell them about this equipment,” Nuñez said. “Now I can actually show them.”
The $3.9 million facility is the latest completed project funded by Measure V, the $45 million general obligation bond measure that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016.
Already, about $32.4 million of those funds have been expended.
About $1.9 million went toward the 2018 renovation of the Ward Field parking lot, with the rest divided among the culinary arts building, and the ongoing construction of a two-story 16-classroom building at the high school and a parking lot and circular drive in front of the campus, CUSD reported.
Much of the culinary art facility’s features are owed to Nuñez’s input, while the purchase of much of its high-end equipment is owed to a $675,000 grant from the Imperial Irrigation District’s Local Entity Appropriations (LEA) fund.
Measure V’s completed, ongoing and pending projects are also the result of a collaborative effort involving the community, CUSD Board of Trustees, administrators and stakeholders at the local and state level.
“I strongly believe that we delivered a state-ofthe-art facility,” CUSD Superintendent Carlos Gonzales told those gathered for Friday’s tour. “And, hopefully, you’ll walk away with that same feeling.”
Part of the facility’s kitchen area includes three cooking stations that consist of stove tops, cooling centers, ovens and food preparation stations. A section devoted to classroom instruction includes a demonstration area complete with television monitors and a rotating mirror that provides seated students a bird’seye view of what’s taking place.
Future plans call for plaques to be installed on the cooking stations that would recognize stakeholders whose contributions helped make the facility a reality.
“That’s what makes it so sweet, that something that was a dream has become a reality,” Gonzales said. “And it’s all for one thing – our students.”
The campus’ culinary arts program has grown in popularity among students, who in turn have found a space to excel in, judging by the competitive awards they have earned in recent years.
Over the past three years, students have won two first places and one third place at the state level, and a second and third place at the national level at the annual Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) competition.
The FCCLA was scheduled to host one of its competitions at the new facility this coming school year, but those plans appear to have been placed on hold on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nuñez said.
Previously, the school district announced that it plans to implement a structured distance-learning model when the school year begins on Aug. 24 and would only resume onsite instruction when public health authorities and conditions allowed for it.
The high school campus’ culinary art program offers a beginners and an advanced course for students, who receive hands-on training with every available piece of kitchen equipment.
By the end of the semester-long beginners class, students earn a ServSafe food handlers certification, while the two-year advanced students earn a manager’s certification.
Nuñez said he envisions a greater number of students enrolling in advanced culinary arts programs once they graduate high school, and a greater possibility that Imperial Valley College will add its own such program to accommodate the growing number of students graduating from Calexico High’s program.
Expanded storage space for dry goods, as well as the addition of a walk-in refrigerator and a freezer should also allow the program to house larger quantities of food items that students could use to cater a larger number of events, host additional afterschool classes for students and adults alike, or help combat food insecurity in the community, officials said.
“This is a good investment for the future of our community,” said Norma Galindo, IID director and CHS Career and Technical Education nursing program educator, in a written statement.
Initially, Galindo had considered securing the IID funding to support the Calexico Brown Bag Coalition’s efforts to help serve meals to the area’s homeless individuals. When that idea was deemed unfeasible, Galindo and fellow Director Erik Ortega worked to secure the IID’s LEA funds for the culinary arts program.
“This new state-ofthe-art culinary kitchen has definitely met the expectations and more,” Galindo stated in a CUSD press release.
Less evident among the new facility’s features is its seismic retrofitting, made possible by funding from the state Department of General Services’ Division of the State Architect, said John Dominguez, project manager for School Site Solutions Inc., which is acting as a consultant for the Measure V-related campus projects.
The seismic features are also being incorporated into the campus’ new classroom buildings.
Work is ongoing for a two-story 16-classroom building and a lighted parking lot and circular drive on campus.
The new building will accommodate the campus’ robotics, entrepreneurship and Navy JROTC programs and about 550 of the campus’ estimated 2,000 students, officials previously said.
Once completed, contractors will turn their attention to the project’s phase A3, which calls for the removal of several portable classrooms to the north of the administration building and the construction of a two-story 12-classrooom building in their place.
Though there have been some hiccups related to the pandemic’s effect on manpower and the availability of materials, Dominguez said the overall project remains on schedule.
He also gave credit to local and state stakeholders for making the project a reality.
“This is a demonstration of the common good,” Dominguez said.