Improving food quality at Canutillo ISD schools

Improving the quality of food in school cafeterias has become a priority across the nation, El Paso County is no exception.

The Canutillo Independent School District has partnered with Southwest Food Service Excellence to provide student with healthful meals.

Southwest Food Service Excellence is in more than 50 schools in the state of Texas.

Culinary Vice-President for SFE, Chef Monty Staggs, said chefs will train cafeteria staff in a variety of culinary techniques. The company uses less processed foods and more made-from-scratch recipes.

Students will get to enjoy their meals in a food court setting with more options and a full salad bar.

Chef Staggs said feedback from students is also important because they don’t want children to get bored of cafeteria food.

The food they eat can also follow them into the classroom.

“If they’re learning about different parts of the world, we have a concept that goes along with that. We believe in taste-testing a whole variety of foods,” said Chef Staggs.

Smokehouse cuisine and Mediterranean meatballs are just some of the foods CISD staff got try Tuesday night.

Chef Staggs said he enjoys seeing the reaction from students when they eat food they’ve never tried before.

“We get that ‘wow, I like that, I never knew I liked that’ and so we get that eye-opening moment,” said Staggs.

Chef Staggs said he got into the cafeteria food industry because he has two school-aged children and saw how ‘lousy’ the food was in schools.

“I get to change kids’ lives each and every day.”

The school lunch program at Canutillo ISD is funded by local and federal taxpayers, therefore students do not have to pay for lunch.

“For some of these kids, this is sometimes the only meal they may eat, I want to make sure this is the best meal they can eat,” said Chef Staggs.