Ahead of the first day of school on Monday, a new, state-of-the-art food kitchen in Perris is preparing fresh meals for 20,000 students in the Val Verde Unified School District.

The kitchen is revolutionizing how the district provides healthy meals, Director of Nutrition Services Chris Hutchinson said, ensuring students at the district’s 22 school sites can succeed in the classroom.

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“For this district, it’s a game changer,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve never had a production kitchen. We have always worked out of our cafeterias.”

The facility, the first of its kind for the district, has been in the works for three years.

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