Indian River High cooks up plans for culinary pathway

DAGSBORO — Indian River High School has the ingredients for a new career path, starting in 2024-25.

Plans for a multiyear culinary program were approved Monday by the Indian River School District board of education.

“The Indian River High School will be starting an exciting new culinary program next year, that is positively encouraged by the local food industry (and) similar to what some other school districts around the state have,” said William “Joe” Dooley, the district’s supervisor of buildings and grounds.

The first year will include an introduction to cold-food preparation, while subsequent years in the pathway would require a commercial kitchen space. Therefore, officials plan to pursue a certificate of necessity for a building expansion and construction project.

Because that proposal would take longer than a year to complete, an interim course would be used in September 2025.

“For this interim year two plan, the school would utilize the existing year one classroom, with additional modifications to be planned out and (to) occur the following summer,” Mr. Dooley said.

During the first year, the construction effort will be relatively small and will be performed using minor cap funds, and a combination of staff, maintenance techs and an outside contractor, Mr. Dooley said.

Tammy Smith, the district’s director of business, said the certificate of necessity is due at the Department of Education by Aug. 31 of this year. It would cover major capital improvement funding to add a culinary classroom and additional learning spaces, but no figure for the project was given.

If approved, the district would receive the state funding July 1, 2025.

Because the commercial kitchen would not be ready for the second year, Ms. Smith said, “what we are looking at is sending our students out to restaurants to work in the commercial kitchens there, maybe still being able to do a lot of the work in the ‘cold’ kitchen. We brainstormed a lot of ideas on what we could do.”

She added that the district would need to hire an architect to compile information for the certificate of necessity and that Buck Simpers Architect+Associates, which is working on the construction project at Sussex Technical High School, has availability to do the work this summer.

Her hope is that the certificate can be presented at the July board meeting for approval.

In addition, while Ms. Smith initially estimated the cost of that work to be $20,000, she said at the board meeting Monday that BSA+A will perform it for $5,000.

In addition, Richard Y. Johnson & Son, the general contractor and construction management firm overseeing the new Sussex Central High School, has offered to do the pricing on the design free of charge, she said.