{"id":28701,"date":"2024-03-15T16:28:40","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T16:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mchs-culinary-program-receives-grant-from-lor-foundation-for-equipment\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:37:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:37:48","slug":"mchs-culinary-program-receives-grant-from-lor-foundation-for-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mchs-culinary-program-receives-grant-from-lor-foundation-for-equipment\/","title":{"rendered":"MCHS culinary program receives grant from LOR Foundation for equipment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Navauh
Navauh Ray, Gwenevere Wing and Steffan Ptaszynski prepare for a catering event. Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez High School culinary program was awarded $9,700 from the LOR Foundation to purchase a new oven\/range and other kitchen supplies for its students.<\/p>\n

Kanto McPherson, who has been MCHS\u2019s culinary teacher for 11 years, said the culinary program must expand to meet student demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so grateful for the LOR Foundation,\u201d McPherson told The Journal<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019re amazing for the community, and they awarded us nearly $10,000 to purchase equipment and expand the high school\u2019s culinary art program.\u201d<\/p>\n

McPherson said she and her teacher partner now teach a total of 11 sections.<\/p>\n

Culinary Essentials, a beginner course primarily for freshmen and sophomores, needs more space because of conflicting schedules with the Panther Chefs, who cater to businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Culinary Essentials have been getting pushed out of the kitchen when we are really swamped and busy with our catering events,\u201d McPherson said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t enough kitchen space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money from the LOR Foundation will help provide that space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have approved one of the classrooms being turned into more of a home-style kitchen with a new stove and ranges and everything to make it into more of an old-style home economics kitchen,\u201d McPherson said. \u201cIt will be used to teach the basics to my Culinary Essentials intro class.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program now has 180 culinary and catering students, including some who have been in the program for nearly all their high school years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great problem to outgrow our facility and to need a secondary culinary educational space to accommodate these interests,\u201d McPherson said. \u201cI\u2019m really proud and excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite part is the joy of it, seeing students love what they make and be excited to share it and that they want to share the goodness that food brings people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Now, the program will work to purchase the equipment to prepare the new space before the June deadline.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, McPherson shared that many of her students are preparing to take their ServSafe Manager, a food safety certification test. Every restaurant in Colorado is required to have a ServSafe manager, who has to take a \u201chard college-level exam\u201d to be certified.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt instantly makes them so competitive in the service industry or in any job,\u201d McPherson said. \u201cIt shows that they can accomplish something. Some of them are doing it for their career, and others are doing it for their jobs. I have a student working at McDonald\u2019s, and she instantly got a raise. It\u2019s worth it for them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

will help provide a new cooking space for the beginner classes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,439,28,60,36,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-food-drink","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80504,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28701\/revisions\/80504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28701"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}