Construction is underway at Harford Technical High School in several areas including the kitchen that is utilized by both the cafeteria lunch ladies as well as the Food Prep tech area. As the school year began, the Food Prep program is currently attending class in portable one, but what is in store for the program as the school year progresses? Some assume that we may not be cooking at all until the kitchen is complete, others have more outside of the box suggestions such as outdoor cooking, but the answer is one that has just recently been decided as a temporary solution.
As September begins to close and October begins, the Food Prep program will move to the Harford Community College and utilize their kitchen per request. There are several questions that remain and details to figure out for this process, however. First, how are we supposed to keep our food separate from HCC’s food? Both parties will be using the kitchen at similar times so how do we ensure that our food is not used by them and vice versa? Second, how do we maximize the time provided while still reserving time to walk back and forth from campus to campus. This could also result in less cooking time as we still need to allow time for cleanup and lock up at the end of the class period. Finally, the plan is to only use the HCC kitchen during the months of October and November, so what happens after that if construction is not finished?
Although things are still partially undetermined as to where the Food’s Program will work and how we will orchestrate things to continue our hands on learning, this doesn’t mean that we’re not busy in the meantime. Currently the junior class are focused on obtaining our Serve Safe certification which is our Tech Area’s certification needed to graduate. This certification is also very useful in the real world as a job applicant who is Serve Safe certified is more likely to receive the position as all restaurants and food serving establishments must have at least one person on staff with the certification at all times. We are all working diligently and hope to pass the certification test on the first try as of late September/early October 2025.
The Food Prep and Business Management program has been working to adapt to the changes presented to us as we work with what we have until we are back in our kitchen again.
