California school gets state of the art kitchen, fresh garden for students
By Leslie Duarte
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WATSONVILLE, California (KSBW) — The Starlight Elementary students in Watsonville have a new garden and kitchen.
The project was a collaboration through the celebrity chef, Emeril Lagasse Foundation called, Emeril’s Culinary Garden And Teaching Kitchen, the Pajaro Valley Unified school district and the Life Lab nonprofit organization.
Life Lab has been teaching Pajaro Valley Unified School District children about gardening and cooking for more than eight years. The program started in 1979 when a group of teachers began incorporating gardening as a part of their hands-on learning curriculum.
The Emeril’s Culinary Garden and Teaching Kitchen Foundation got involved when the Life Lab team, reached out the founder, and celebrity chef, Emeril Lagasse. After the Lagasse Foundation team visited the Central Coast, they decided to award the Starlight Elementary school with $500,000 to start the project.
The rest of the $3.1 million cost for the garden and kitchen was left to the Pajaro Valley Unified school district and generous community donations.
School officials said they hope the program will teach students to grow, prepare and cook their own food.
Starlight Elementary Principal Jackie Medina said the program will also allow children to practice what they learn in math textbooks in real-life scenarios.
“So, fractions in the recipes. And so there’s all kinds of opportunities for us to take what we typically do in the classroom and align it to what we do here in the space,” Medina said.
Flor Garcia, a mother of a Starlight student and parent-teacher aide for the school, said she likes that the program is on the Central Coast.
“We’re an agriculture town, you know, and a lot of our kids families work in the fields and they’re going to get to experience a little bit of that. And in the kitchen, you know, that’s just awesome,” Garcia said.
Starlight Elementary is the first school in California and the sixth in the country to receive a state-of-the-art kitchen and a garden like this one.
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