Over the past year, ScratchWorks has continued to grow a national movement of school food professionals working to make scratch cooking possible in schools.
Today, ScratchWorks includes 259 school food professionals across 186 school districts in 36 states and Washington, D.C., collectively serving more than 3.8 million students. Our network grew by 57% in just one year, bringing together school food directors, chefs, kitchen managers, and other leaders who are committed to serving the best food possible in schools. Participating districts include small rural districts with 290 students to large urban districts with nearly 1 million.
This year, ScratchWorks participants continued to learn from one another, test new approaches, and move their districts further along the Scratch Cooking Continuum. Driven by connection, 39% of districts self-reported that they moved forward on the Scratch Cooking Continuum.
During the 2026 school year, we launched two new peer-to-peer engagement opportunities that were dreamed up by our participants: ScratchWorks Connect and Regional Workshops.
ScratchWorks Connect is an online community platform exclusive to participants to ask each other questions, find community, and share great ideas. In the first year of its launch, we had 179 active users, 59 individual posts, and 229 unique responses. Now, school food professionals across the nation can connect in real time and leverage the collective expertise of ScratchWorks.
This year, we also launched our first Regional Workshop in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by our participant district Osborn School District. Over the course of one and a half days, we gathered 19 participants from eight surrounding districts and focused on increasing scratch-made breakfast foods and cooking raw beef with limited equipment, and developing new local beef procurement partnerships.
From the workshop feedback, the impact of bringing school food professionals together in person is clear:
- More than half of the attendees had limited or no connections to the other districts attending
- All but 1 attendee indicated they met someone new at the workshop who could help support their school food program
- 94% of attendees indicated that it was very beneficial to connect with other school food professionals.
“This was a fantastic workshop! I appreciated that the recipe demos were from program operators. The content was all very relevant and realistic to be able to implement when faced with limited equipment capacity. This workshop provided a realistic approach to scratch cooking in school meal programs.”
~A school food director attendee
Our community is also becoming a stronger force for change beyond the kitchen. Through the Policy Committee and broader network, ScratchWorks participants have engaged in conversations about local food procurement, USDA Foods, and the policies that can support scratch cooking in schools. In partnership with aligned organizations, we have supported and promoted policy to create a fourth pathway within the USDA Foods program to unlock more flexible spending for local food purchasing. Read more here.
As we look ahead to the 2027 Gathering and another year of growth, we’re excited to keep building this movement. We are now accepting proposals from participants and aligned organizations. Learn more about the Gathering and the proposal submission process on our website.
Healthy school meals do not happen by accident. They happen because dedicated school food professionals are working against a system that doesn’t always support them. By sharing what works, building relationships, and creating practical pathways forward, ScratchWorks is helping school food leaders build systems that make scratch cooking possible.