November 7th, 2025

A Message from your Child Nutrition Team

Dear LVJUSD Parents and Families,

Welcome to our inaugural Child Nutrition Newsletter. Newsletters will be featured a few times each school year and share a bit about our operations, highlight new menu items, and share our ongoing efforts to provide students with a variety of school meals that not only taste good, but also meet the required USDA nutritional guidelines which limit contents like sugar and saturated fat.

With an average daily meal count of over 7000 meals, and approximately 150,000+ meals per month (Oct 2025), we truly are the largest restaurant in town! Thanks to our dedicated staff who continue to think creatively and work collaboratively despite the challenges of aging equipment and infrastructure limitations, we are able to provide healthy meals with a variety of choices, ensuring that student favorites are always in rotation!

We are honored to serve your students every day and look forward to sharing more about our program throughout the year!

Sincerely,

Katie Crouse

Director of Child Nutrition

Two of our four production kitchens are at Granada and Livermore High. Production kitchens produce and package food for other campuses (satellite sites) in their designated cohort. Production kitchens have the infrastructure to prepare large volumes of meals, and allow us to consolidate our labor force for maximum efficiency. Drivers then transport food to the satellite sites where they are heated and served.

Our goal for future menus is to increase the number of entrees made from scratch. When planning menus however, there are a number of factors to be considered. Primarily, we must ensure we can meet student demand. A meal is available to every student who wants one. Additionally, we strive for variety and aim to serve foods students want to eat with us. We always have an eye on our popularity data. Not to be forgotten, we must follow all USDA nutrition regulations.

Preparing meals from scratch requires significantly more labor time as the ingredients are largely in their unprocessed form. That means more nutrients and less undesirable additives (both great), however, further efforts must be made to make these products palatable to students. For example, we season our chicken with a mix of herbs, spices, and olive oil before adding to our Caesar salads and wraps.

Another example of scratch-prepared entrees, and some of our most popular, are our pasta dishes. We received great feedback about our spaghetti and meatballs from elementary students, as well as positive reviews from middle and high school students who enjoyed our chicken pesto pasta.

To fuel young minds prior to the school day, we are proud to offer string cheese and/or yogurt as sources of lean protein. These items, available each morning at breakfast to elementary students, can be selected in addition to the rotating main entree. Don't forget about our selection of fresh rotating produce as well, available at the salad bar with every breakfast!

We began offering freshly baked items for breakfast at select sites as a pilot program last spring. The feedback was undeniable, students loved the fresh baked options.

Currently, we serve fresh-baked bagels with cream cheese on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at all secondary sites. We have a few flavors we rotate between, including: Everything, Plain, Cinnamon Raisin, and Jalapeño.

In terms of the sweeter stuff, we bake up cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays and muffins on Fridays. Yes, they both smell amazing!

Item: Homemade Ham & Cheese Croissant

Level: Elementary

Ingredients: Whole Grain Croissant, Sliced Deli Ham, Melty Cheddar Cheese

This item, which debuted in the 24-25 school year, gets the spotlight in our inaugural newsletter.