Pinckney Bakery serves Lawrence Public Schools
Olivier Desbois | KUJH
Pinckney Elementary School shut down in 2023, but today its halls smell like fresh bread. The Community Connections Bakery opened in Pinckney’s former cafeteria this August, baking breakfast and lunch items for all Lawrence Public Schools.
“We make scones, brownies, dinner rolls, breadsticks, muffins, right now we’re kind of new to this whole thing so we’re just kind of crawling a little bit before we run,” John Bass, Pinckney’s bakery manager, said.
Lawrence School District opened the bakery with the goal of serving healthier, locally-sourced foods. Open kitchen space was available for the bakery at Pinckney, but the district needed to find more funding to make the project possible.
“We wrote a grant, and that one we didn’t get, and then we wrote another grant, and that one we didn’t get, and then we wrote another grant and we finally got that grant, and that was through the Kansas Department of Agriculture,” Julie Henry, the director of nutrition and wellness for Lawrence Public Schools, said.
The only stipulation for the grant was that the bakery commit to using at least 50% locally sourced grains. The Bakery currently gets all of their grains from two mills in Kansas: Stone & Sparrow Farm & Mill and Stafford County Flour Mills.
With the nearly $100,000 of funding, the district bought new equipment including ovens, hot boxes, and a dough divider that makes baking so many items much faster. The bakery’s staff are proud to be serving Lawrence’s children.
“A lot of these kids come in and what they’re eating is at school and not as much at home sometimes, so if we can be a part of nurturing children it’s a pretty cool experience.” Dave Melody, Pinckney’s bakery assistant and delivery driver, said.
Next semester Bass and Melody plan to train students from the Community Transition Program, which teaches living skills to 18 to 21-year-olds with special education needs. With the extra help, they hope to open a coffee shop at Pinckney where they can serve more baked treats.
In the future, the district hopes to find more opportunities to self-produce items of their school meals.
“We’re in the process of writing another grant that would really increase that scratch cooking for the school meals at all the schools,” Henry said.
