The Riverside Brookfield High School District 208 Board of Education met during a special meeting on June 25 to approve construction bids for a new culinary lab at the school.
The project is expected to cost about $2.17 million in total, with the board approving bids last Wednesday. The new culinary lab will take the place of the current alumni lounge, right next to the current, smaller food lab.
“The goal of this new food lab will be to accommodate classes like baking and pastry advanced foods – eventually, a culinary experience where students can get hospitality credit and the experience of what it would be like to work in a commercial kitchen,” said Supt. Kevin Skinkis.
Skinkis said the district has enough money in their reserved funds to complete the project. The board of education is also looking at taking out about $2 million in capital improvement bonds that could potentially help fund the project and plans for solar panels at the school.
In February, officials said that if the board spent an estimated $4.5 million on the lab and solar-panel project, it could reduce the school’s cash fund balance to about 44% of annual operating expenses. While a 33% cash reserve level is generally considered healthy, officials said they were not comfortable dropping reserves that low because they could not depend on consistent, on-time tax distributions from Cook County.
“There have been some parents that are concerned that we’re not putting more money into music and why we’re putting money into the culinary lab, but those are two different buckets,” Skinkis said. “Those are two different line items in the budget. The overall response from people involved in the foods program and students involved in the foods program are very positive about the new addition of the culinary lab.”
The addition of a new culinary lab comes after heavy demand from students. Skinkis said there are about 500 students who have requested to be in culinary classes, and the current culinary lab can only fit about 25 students per class. The current food lab operates more like a home kitchen, and the plans for the new lab will give students more industrial culinary experience.
School officials also want to expand the culinary lab because they are trying to offer dual credit culinary courses with Triton College, and to be certified to do that, the lab must operate like a commercial kitchen.
The district plans for demolition to take place this summer and construction of the new culinary lab to take place in the fall. Skinkis said they hope for the new culinary lab to be open in the spring semester of the 2024-25 school year.
To accommodate the demand until construction is completed, students in the culinary program will alternate days in the current lab and the classroom, learning both hands-on and technical skills.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to continue to offer our students career pathway opportunities,” Skinkis said. “Getting them an opportunity to work in a commercial kitchen and to receive school credit is another great thing we’re offering our students so that they can have experience and see if this is a pathway that they’re interested in.”
The contract for the new culinary lab was awarded to Nicholas & Associates of Mount Prospect.
Correction, July 3, 2024, 9:02 a.m.: An earlier version of this story contained the incorrect location of Nicholas & Associates, a result of confusion over an address published in official documents. The location has since been corrected: It is Mount Prospect. We apologize for the error.
