Cafe Fridays at Ozark Schools
What is Cafe Friday? This school based enterprise provides opportunities for future employment to students with learning disabilities in the 9th-12th grade.
How does our program relate to economics & social studies? Cafe Friday is a school based enterprise that students with learning disabilities in grades 9 through 12 operate every Friday to cook, serve, and deliver $5 economically friendly meals to teachers throughout the entire Ozark Public Schools campuses under the supervision of their transition/life skills teacher. The students help decide the menu options that get emailed to the district every Monday morning, conduct inventory, prepare labels for boxes, grocery shop online, and make magic happen on Friday when preparing these meals in less then two hours so that no teacher misses their lunch.
Ozark Public Schools partners with Arkansas Rehabilitation Services as an OWLS school to help support our largest and most utilized school based enterprise; Cafe Friday. It also supports our other school based enterprises; Shred-It and Squeaky Clean Janitorial Services. These two enterprises were created for students that had severe disabilities and were unable to leave campus. What does OWLS stand for? It provides opportunities for work based learning. It also provides opportunities for students to obtain important life skills, work skills, and have the opportunity to obtain certifications, while receiving a monthly paycheck and still attending high school. Arkansas Rehabilitation Services also provides the school district with funds to help provide for additional services based on student count.
To be eligible to work at Cafe Friday, a student will enroll in a “Transition or Transition to Work” course on their schedules and be receiving special education services due to a learning disability. In order to receive a paycheck from Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, the student must be at least 16 years old and be in the 10th grade or higher. Students in the 9th and 10th grades can still choose to work at Cafe Friday and many do because they enjoy the “hands on” experience! Each student and their guardian must complete a referral packet that is required by Arkansas Rehabilitation Services every year that consists of various forms, SSI assistance, and pre-assessments. At the end of the year, students complete a post-assessment as well as the supervising teacher to determine data for the work based experience for Arkansas Rehabilitation Services and Arkansas Transition Services.
Cafe Friday is a school based enterprise that students with learning disabilities in grades 9 through 12 operate every Friday to cook, serve, and deliver $5 economically friendly meals to teachers throughout the entire Ozark Public Schools campuses.
What We Do All Year
August
So, what do we do for 10 months out of the year? During the month of August, we start taking care of business! Students and guardians begin filling out packets at home and returning them, while in the classroom we are practicing filling out applications. Students also watch videos about etiquettes in the workplace, research meals that are cost friendly, and take their first tour of Cafe Friday. During the tour, the Assistant Manager and Manager (both students!) lead the tour, discuss what needs to be done, what can’t be done, what will get you fired, and more about the rules and opportunity. The Assistant Manager and Manager roles are normally two Seniors that showed great work ethic, people skills, dependability, and wanted to truly better themselves after high school. Those two students that had shown during their 9th-11th grade years that they were serious about their job and wanted to be considered for a management position their senior year. The students would learn of their new positions at the end of the year banquet when the previous managers “retired” due to graduation. The other students also hold jobs and take great pride in them. I allow the students to pick their own jobs or be assigned to tasks appropriate for their skill levels. We always have a box labeler, someone to put the boxes in the correct school spot, a cook, a prep cook, condiment maker, dishwasher, silverware roller, and personal banker that we all called the “money man”. Our “money man,” who wanted nothing to do with food but would help out on the business side of things, was put in charge of inventory, making deposits, keeping a track of payments, and would review our receipts to make sure meals were profitable. If it wasn’t then he and I would review what we could have done differently or just to scratch that whole meal in general to keep the overall cost below $5 in order to make a profit.
September through April
We go to work! Our menu always consists of a baked potato, sweet potato, and a third option. The third option always changes each week but the potatoes stay consistent. I teach the students about the history of Cafe Friday and how we got started with just a 50lb box of potatoes donated to my class four years ago. We talked about how we had to beg, borrow, and find other sources of income to survive that year because we did not have any form of resources that year to support us. We ended that year with $1,150 in our bank account for start up fees for year two of the business. That group of kids didn’t get paid but we're so happy we were able to create a business. We figured out a need for our teachers, and supplied them with an economically friendly meal every Friday. The first week of Cafe Friday with a new group of students, I will select our third item, which is normally something most of the students can cook easily or assemble fast. This year we kicked off Cafe Friday with taco salad! Students spend time brainstorming ideas about what we can prepare each week, and search the internet to find out how much it would cost. We try hard to accommodate as many student ideas as possible.
May
In May, I reviewed with my students the history of Cafe Friday and we completed as many certification training sessions as possible. I then show them the data from just this year (Program Year 4!) and how much they have made and what our bank account is ending with compared to year 1.
This year my students from August to March have received a total of $9,300.38, the school district has received $14,000, and our bank account ended with $75,000 in it!
The students, parents, and school staff can’t believe it. I also share all of this information with the students' parents and school officials during the “End of the Year Banquet” where the students help prepare the meal for their parents, decorate the cafeteria, and help serve the guests their plates and drinks. This year my students completed training in OSHA 10, ServSafe, Professional Guest Services, and Mrs. Stewart’s Driver’s ED 101.
Other Student Opportunities:
By partnering with Arkansas Rehabilitation Services and Arkansas Career Training Institute in Hot Springs, OSHA 10, ServSafe, and Professional Guest Service was provided to my students with no charge to them and students were trained virtually via Zoom. Mrs. Stewart’s Driver’s ED 101 consisted of my students practicing the drivers education exam on the Arkansas State Police website, reviewing the drivers manual, and myself giving up my plan time every Wednesday for about 6 weeks to take my students in the school car to our local police station to take the exam. We made an agreement that I would give up my plan time if they would put in their time, effort, and be at my door at 1pm every Wednesday to go take the test. There was never an instance where a student was not waiting at my door. It took some of them two tries and some up to 9 tries, but it didn’t matter how many times someone failed, one of their classmates would cheer them on. It wasn’t long till the class across the hall was cheering them on because they were keeping up with who was getting added to the stream of pictures outside my door. The class across the hall was the most advanced math class anyone could take and was being taught by a teacher who was a West Point graduate and previously worked in the Pentagon. That is all it took for some of these kids to get motivated to take the test. Once a student passed, some of them would say “Well, we don’t have a car so what do we do next?” That is when we could begin creating connections to what we’d been learning all year long and put it into practice. We talked about the skills we learned and how they could be useful in all kinds of jobs, not just not cooking. We also talked about our certifications and how we could make more per hour because of them, and began researching where in their communities they could look for employment. When school ended on June 3rd, 2021 we had students currently employed at Butterball LLC., McDonalds, Taco Bell/KFC, Pizza Hut, Wiederkehr Weinkeller Restaurant, Owning and Operating a Cattle Business, and one student on a 6 week internship in Arizona working at his grandmother’s restaurant. Several students that have graduated from the program have stopped me in town and told me they get more per hour because of the training they received during Cafe Friday. Some students also want to come back and help because they loved it and said it was the best part of high school for them.
Wrapping Up
This was the first year I was unable to have volunteers come and work with our students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In previous years, I have had principals, counselors, retired teachers, bus drivers, janitors, an insurance agent, and the City of Ozark Mayor volunteer and every time they state to me “ I can not believe these students are doing all of this by themselves and I would have never known they had disabilities if I hadn't seen you in here with them.” One of the greatest joys anyone could receive is the confidence and self-worth you see in the students from the beginning of the year till the end and witness how much they come together and cheer each other on. This program creates community and builds relationships not only between the students but also with anyone who volunteers with them.
One of the final things we do before the students leave for the summer is order pizza or sonic drinks and discuss what each student did with their money, whether they should they have done something different, and do they want to stay in this program next year or have a schedule change. Surprisingly I have only had to fire two students and have only had two students who did not want to return the next year, the choice is totally left up to them to make their own decisions and abide by their choices. When discussing what students spend the money they earn on, most of the responses I get are similar to “I blew all my first check at Wal-Mart on snacks and it only lasted like a day, then I was broke again.” Then we discuss what they would have done differently. Usually the response is something like, ``I have decided I want to buy a phone so I am going to save a few paychecks.” I love when my students learn from their mistakes and I realize my teaching and sporadically grey hair is finally paying off! I also have students who are very mature for their age and use their hard earned money to help pay bills and buy groceries for their families. It is those students whom I think actually benefit the most from this program and are able to see their worth and want to provide a service to their parents so they are eager to get out there and look for jobs. They are also the first ones to sign up to take their drivers ed exam because they see the need and want to help provide. My students make it worth giving up my plan times on Wednesday, picking up groceries every Thursday from Wal-Mart or Sam's Club, and giving up an entire summer to learn how to drive a school bus and obtain my CDL just so I could provide this type of service to my students! They deserve every opportunity and need someone to believe in them and help them learn to be productive citizens of Ozark, Arkansas.
