Branson Johnson, Gretna Elementary School kindergartner, and GES kitchen manager Sheila Scholting celebrate the reopening of the recently renovated kitchen at Gretna Elementary School. Staff prepared food at Gretna Middle School, bringing it in at the beginning of the school year. The kitchen reopened last week.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
It’s back to lunch as usual at Gretna Elementary School, following a renovation project that wrapped up last week on the school kitchen.
The work, which began this summer, was completed as a second phase of further renovations at Gretna Elementary School. Due to the extent of the work involved for the kitchen portion of the project, that phase was given more time for completion.
For the first month of the school year, kitchen staff offered one menu choice each day instead of the typical three. Parents were asked to order ahead of time using the Nutrislice app.
Food deliveries were sent up the street to Gretna Middle School, where GES kitchen staff met to prepare food, driving it to GES and unloading for lunch setup.
As time went on, the staff were able to begin using the cooler and other pieces of the GES kitchen, though no access to the dish machine meant staff were packing up dirty dishes and taking them to GMS to wash.
That continued through Sept. 10. On Sept. 13, all three choices were being offered and food was being prepped and served at GES by Sept. 16.
The project ended up finishing ahead of its mid-September deadline.
“We’re happy that it finished up a little bit quicker than expected,” said Sharon Schaefer, Gretna Public Schools director of food and nutrition services. “I’ve heard from a lot of people how beautiful it is. Really, it’s just so clean looking. The team that works at GES did a fabulous job keep it clean, but when something is decades old, there’s only so much you can do. Now, everything is white and bright and gray and modern.”