Santa Fe South Schools, a district in Oklahoma City, has taken full control of its cafeteria operations for the 2025-26 school year, cutting ties with an outside food service manager to run its own kitchens. The district says the shift means it can build its own menus, tweak old favorites, and roll out new recipes rather than following a contractor’s playbook.
“The 2025-26 school year marks an exciting new chapter for our district, as we’ve brought our entire Child Nutrition program in-house,” the district says on its families lunch menu page. “Taking control of our own kitchens means we are now creating our own menus, improving on traditional favorites, and developing new recipes.” The district has framed the move around a simple goal: “Our goal is to serve our students fresh, delicious meals that they will enjoy,” according to the same page. A related district page adds that the new approach is meant to keep meals “not only nutritious but also flavorful and appealing,” per sfspenn.santafesouth.org.
The change comes as KOCO reports Oklahoma lawmakers reviewed how healthier school lunches could affect student health and classroom outcomes, with advocates pointing to local efforts like Santa Fe South’s as a potential model other districts could follow. The state has 525 school districts, and a coordinated approach could help more of them improve meals and bring fresher, more local food into cafeterias, according to the same report.
Behind the Menu Overhaul
The push for change at Santa Fe South was about more than just paperwork. Marissa Kasper, the district’s director of child nutrition, said the district wanted better food quality, more fresh fruits and vegetables, and more varied entrees, according to KOCO’s reporting. Since making the switch, the district says it has added more produce, salad bars, and in-house food preparation, and reports seeing more students showing up to eat.
What the Research Says About Healthier Meals
Academic research offers some support for the idea that better cafeteria food can move the needle in the classroom. A study examined by Brookings found that student test scores were 0.03 to 0.04 standard deviations higher at schools that contracted with a healthier lunch company, with those gains about 40% larger among students who qualified for free or reduced-price meals. The research, which covered five academic years from 2008-09 through 2012-13 across roughly 9,700 public schools, found no evidence that healthier, privately contracted meals changed how many lunches were actually sold, and no evidence that they reduced the number of overweight students…