Portage Township Schools Food Service Director Dawn Kelley had homework due on Friday.
She’s one of 23 school food service professionals nationwide to have been granted a 2026 Healthy School Food Pathway fellowship through the Chef Ann Foundation.
Portage High School kids are graduating in early June, but Kelley’s graduation isn’t until January.
Her capstone project, turned in before Friday’s deadline, came with a $5,000 grant to implement it.
“I want to increase the scratch cooking 30% or more for breakfast in the middle school and high school,” she said. “That’s where we have the lower participation.” Cooking from scratch should encourage secondary school students to opt for nutritious breakfasts, giving them the fuel they need to be alert and attentive until lunch.
Cooking from scratch for schools comes in two flavors. There’s starting with all raw ingredients to make fresh food, and then there’s speed scratch, which involves some premade ingredients and others raw.
For pizza, that could mean having premade dough but adding sauce developed in the school kitchens.
The grant will allow Kelley and her crew to develop materials and train staff.
“I think they’re excited for it. They enjoy when the students like the new recipes and taste test,” Kelley said.
Starting at the middle and high school levels makes sense because the kitchens have better equipment, she said. “We had to make our goal attainable. We had to focus on three schools.”
With the closing of Aylesworth Elementary School and the construction of a new middle school, along with a cafeteria project planned at Portage High School, and the fellowship that requires at least eight hours a week of extra work, Kelley has been busy.
The fellowship is an intensive 13-month program, including field trips across the country, weekly three-hour virtual sessions, self-guided online classes and more.
“It’s a lot, but I’m enjoying it,” Kelley said. “It would take me probably years to learn everything I’m learning in 13 months.”
“It’s not just about the cooking,” she said. It includes grant writing, menu planning and other aspects of the culinary operation.
“I try to do a lot of this outside my workday,” Kelley said. She spent Memorial Day weekend working on assignments for her fellowship.
Kelley and her fellow fellows develop leadership skills, expand their expertise in school food systems and collaborate with peers committed to transforming school meals.
At Portage, Kelley has been working to get fresh ingredients, locally sourced if possible. The Trump administration canceled the Farm to School program that provided fresh, local ingredients for healthy school lunches, but Kelley continues to work with some local farmers to get fresh ingredients where she can, within the district’s limited budget.
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“I do want to incorporate the local grains,” she said, and has ordered apples from local farmers as well.
It’s not only more sustainable to source ingredients locally, but it also helps the local economy.
The district also has hydroponic units to grow lettuce at some of the schools. Kids enjoy helping tend and harvest the lettuce and seeing how much it has grown over the weekend.
“Your students know where your food comes from,” she said, when they can help produce it or see that it comes from local farms.
Kelley’s department has won numerous accolades from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for excellence in school nutrition.
Area school food service directors meet monthly. “We do collaborate and talk about recipes and share recipes,” she said. Kelley plans to work with her counterparts in LaPorte and River Forest to work on menu ideas.
Kelley has an extensive background in food service, including eight years at the Radisson in Merrillville, where she was director of restaurant operations. She then went to Valparaiso University to run the dining program there. “Portage is my first K-12 experience in food.”
“I fell in love with food service,” even getting to handle the coronation ball for the Miss USA pageant when it was held in Northwest Indiana.
At Portage, she likes to introduce new dishes for the students. “We try to at least do new recipes easily, like five to six each semester,” she said. “We always look for new stuff. Keep the classics that the students love, but we always like to try new things.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.