Thursday, October 1, 2026
Students in the Locust Valley Central School District are seeing more fresh, made-from-scratch meals and healthier options on their lunch trays this year, as Aramark Student Nutrition continues to revamp the district’s food program.
At the Sept. 15 Board of Education meeting, Melissa Pota, Aramark’s food service director for the district, outlined the many changes that have come to the cafeterias since Locust Valley began working with Aramark, a food service provider based in Philadelphia that was hired several years ago to improve nutrition and quality.
“We believe that nutritious and well-balanced meals are essential for students’ success,” Pota, said. “We are proud to provide delicious and healthy options that students love, prepared with ingredients you can trust.”
During the presentation, Pota explained that Aramark works only with name brands such as Tyson and uses 100 percent ground beef, and that the district’s eggs and produce are always fresh. The district receives weekly produce deliveries to ensure quality.
Many meals, especially at the high school, are now prepared from scratch. The kitchens make everything from pancakes and French toast to pasta dishes and roasted vegetables, while freshly baked breads are delivered daily.
Ensuring safety for students with allergies has also become a major focus. The district, Pota said, has adopted a comprehensive allergy management program that includes training, allergy kits in every kitchen, and an alert system built into the point-of-sale registers.
“In order for our cashier to go ahead, they have to click on each one,” she said, referring to students flagged with anaphylaxis alerts. “It will not let them go ahead unless that is acknowledged.”
Parents are encouraged to communicate directly with Pota about their children’s allergies. She said that Aramark works closely with nurses and teachers to create individualized Student Allergy Readiness Plans, and keeps allergen refrigerators in every cafeteria.
“I work with a lot of allergen parents that have dairy allergies,” she said. “We have non-dairy pizzas, dairy-free cheeses and numerous gluten-free products, including muffins, bagels and breads.”
Pota’s presentation also highlighted the wide range of choices available to students at the secondary level, from yogurt and pasta bars to baked potato and taco stations. The cafeterias serve pizza made from scratch, as well as house-made calzones and protein bites for student athletes.
“We keep our line open in the high school until 3:15,” she said, “so that way the athletes can come in and grab something before practice.”
The menu rotation includes limited-time offerings that vary monthly. In September, one popular dish was a spicy chicken burrito on flatbread.
At the elementary level, Pota said, the focus has been on introducing fresher ingredients and reducing processed foods. “Instead of offering the egg patties, we switched to fresh eggs,” she said. “We make our eggs in the morning every day. We took away the pizza every day and substituted that for other meals.”
To promote variety, the food service team cut back on “brunch for lunch” days and introduced more pasta and scratch-made items. Snacks have also been revised, with less emphasis on chips and sugary treats and more on whole-grain crackers, hard-boiled eggs and 100 percent juice ices.
Breakfast menus now feature avocado toast, homemade muffins, smoothies and egg frittatas. Pota has been visiting the schools to educate younger students about what makes a balanced meal.
“I’ve been going around to the elementary schools, especially with breakfast, so they understand what is a meal,” she said. “I’ve been imparting that they need to take a fruit, they need to take a vegetable.”
This fall, the cafeterias will also begin offering homemade soups once a week, including chicken and rice, vegetable and chili, all made from fresh produce.
Pota emphasized that all macaroni and cheese served in the district is made in-house, not prepackaged or frozen.
After her presentation, Grace Maschinski, Aramark’s senior district manager, spoke about the progress the district has made since partnering with the company. She noted that Pota is the only Aramark employeein the district, working closely with the district’s food service staff and business office to meet state and federal nutrition guidelines.
“Her job here is to support in training (district kitchen staff), help to reinforce and maintain the regulatory environment,” Maschinski explained, “and again, use all of the Aramark resources that come to this district to help provide better support in terms of food quality.”
She added that the program has not only improved the quality of school meals but also increased student participation dramatically. Since Aramark took over, breakfast participation districtwide has grown 40 percent, and lunch by 5 percent.
More recently, the expansion of the federal provision that allows all students to receive free meals has led to a surge in numbers. “We have increased breakfast by 43 percent this year versus prior year, and lunch was increased by 37 percent,” Maschinski said.
The district has also expanded breakfast to all schools, where previously it was offered only at the middle and high schools. Maschinski said that making healthy meals accessible to all students removes barriers for families and helps ensure that children are ready to learn.
“We all know that students can’t learn if they’re hungry,” she said. “So again, just huge kudos. We’ve come an awfully long way.”
Pota said her main goal for this year is to bring the same scratch-made, nutritious meals students have at the secondary schools to the elementary level.
She noted that the transition requires patience as the district adapts its equipment and staffing to accommodate more from-scratch cooking. “It’s a little challenge, as far as staffing goes and equipment goes, and so we’re taking baby steps,” Pota said. “We will hopefully get to a place where we are at what we’re doing at the secondary level.”
