{"id":449475,"date":"2026-09-01T02:32:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449475\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T02:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:32:39","slug":"macarthur-park-fence-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449475\/","title":{"rendered":"MacArthur Park fence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nutrition services workers file into the kitchen at Valley High School in Santa Ana<\/a> from as early as 6 a.m. to start prepping for the breakfast and lunch hours.<\/p>\n

For the last five years, the Santa Ana Unified School District initiated a scratch-cooking program, meaning the kitchens have pivoted from majority individually wrapped lunches to homestyle cooked dishes.<\/p>\n

As the program rolls out, the menu has evolved. This school year, Santa Ana Unified high school students are served chilaquiles, birria, carnitas, fettuccine alfredo, and so much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to focus initially on the demographic of our community, and we want to give them items that they have heard of or are familiar with, at least to start out,\u201d said Jonathan Park, chef at Santa Ana Unified School District. \u201cThat way we can really see whether the scratch cooking is working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Park works with nutrition specialists on building out a well-balanced menu each month and gives each school detailed instructions on rolling out those meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the time our staff isn’t used to that type of cooking,\u201d Park said. \u201cCooking now has really been part of their job. Every day they’re prepping something, or they’re cooking something from a raw state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why it matters<\/p>\n

Valley High School serves more than 1,000 students a day at lunchtime, Visoso said. With youth homelessness<\/a> and hunger on the rise<\/a> in Orange County and beyond, Visoso said she wants to make sure students are eating well, but also that they\u2019re eating enough.<\/p>\n

Students who don\u2019t want a meal are encouraged to take one anyway and leave it at the share station for someone else to pick up. Food is very rarely left at those share stations, she added.<\/p>\n

Josh Goddard, director of nutrition services for the Santa Ana Unified School District, said funding for school nutrition is generally limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get about $6 per lunch. We get about $4 per breakfast,\u201d Goddard said. \u201cThat’s got to cover everything from the food that goes into the plate to the people that put that plate together, and then all the other little miscellaneous things that are needed to get the food where it needs to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the scratch-cooking program is not where he wants it to be, yet, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not going to be satisfied until every single student feels proud of what they pick up; they feel like they’re seen on the menus. They feel like their voices matter. Every single student needs to feel that way,\u201d Goddard said. \u201cWe have a lot of work to do, and gratefully, the Santa Ana Unified School District has prioritized that, and will continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jonathan Park, chef at Santa Ana Unified School District, prepares a batch of spaghetti noodles for lunch. Santa Ana Unified high schools have prioritized freshly made breakfast and lunch meals.<\/p>\n

How it works\u00a0<\/p>\n

Designing the menu means trying to give kids what they want to eat with dishes or ingredients they’re familiar with, but also incorporating new foods. Each menu includes 20 food options for breakfast and lunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re able to give them something different, and from there we keep trial and error. We constantly just improve the menu as we go,\u201d Park said. \u201cIt’s constantly just building off of what the kids like.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a new lunch menu drops, Cafeteria Supervisor Janet Visoso told LAist she studies it meticulously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tend to print everything, read it to myself, reread it, rewrite it. That’s just the way I learn,\u201d Visoso said. \u201cI don’t get bored of my job. I’m excited, and I take it as a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visoso said when she started in nutrition services 12 years ago, the district offered a lot of individually wrapped items.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the stuff was hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, and we all love that, but to get scratch cooking and why it counts more is because we feed them a labor of love, and they are actually enjoying what they’re eating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What do students think?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The quality and health of the school lunches has improved, Alfonso Guttierez, a senior at Valley High, told LAist.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, the previous year was different, and it\u2019s been a big difference,\u201d Guittierez added. \u201cI like it very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edith Marin, a senior at Valley High School, said she feels extra appreciative of school lunches knowing that staff worked hard to cook them from scratch. For her and her group of friends, birria ramen was a big hit even with Southern California\u2019s heat wave.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood cooked hot is just better,\u201d Marin said. \u201cNot all refrigerated food is as healthy, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials said it\u2019s sometimes surprising what the students do and don\u2019t enjoy. For example, when fish tacos and chile verde were added to the menu, staff thought they\u2019d be instant hits \u2014 they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had raw fish filets that we battered and we oven-fried until crispy. We had the slaw. We had the pico de gallo on the tortilla, and we thought that would be a hit,\u201d Park said. \u201cIt didn’t go so well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nutrition services workers file into the kitchen at Valley High School in Santa Ana from as early as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-449475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}