How One Arizona District Turned School Cafeterias Into Scratch Kitchens
By Sarah Schwartz for EdWeek
Ask Cory Alexander, the director of child nutrition in Arizona’s Osborn school district, what he does for a living, and he’ll tell you that he manages six successful small restaurants in central Phoenix.
It’s a tongue-in-cheek answer, but one that captures the vision Alexander has brought to Osborn’s school food program: meals made from scratch with quality ingredients, prepared by skilled cooks and bakers whose expertise is valued and visible.
The goal, he says, is simple: happier, healthier kids—and school meals the community can take pride in.
Today, district kitchens prepare about 60% of the food served from scratch. On any given morning, Osborn’s cafeteria staff might be chopping vegetables to prepare picadillo made with locally sourced beef or rolling dough for chicken pot pie—one of the district’s signature dishes.
Under Alexander’s leadership, the district has expanded training for cafeteria staff, pushed for more competitive pay, grown nutrition education for students and families, and sought out student feedback to develop menus that reflect the district’s cultural diversity.
These kinds of sweeping changes can be hard to enact in school food programs, where tight budgets, staff turnover, and aging facilities can often limit innovation.
“He’s a really big dreamer,” Theresa Mazza, a dietician and chef who leads nutrition education for the district, said of Alexander, a 2026 Leader To Learn From honoree. But he’s not just strategic, she said, he’s conscientious—adept at navigating technicalities and celebrating small wins on the way to bigger goals.
The careful work has paid off, said Colleen McCabe, Osborn’s chief operations officer. In Osborn today, 96% of students eat school lunch, compared with a 52% statewide average in Arizona.
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