Students have started working at the Pinckney school’s bakery, and in the future, they may have the opportunity to hone their skills in a school coffee shop. 

Community Transitions, or C-Tran, helps 18- to 21-year-old students with disabilities prepare for their postsecondary plans. It is one of the district programs that moved into the former Pinckney Elementary School building after the school board voted to close it and Broken Arrow. 

The school’s grant-funded bakery opened in August. 

“I love seeing the kids in the bakery and watching our team work with the students and learn,” said Julie Henry, director of nutrition and wellness for the district. “I think our staff gets joy from working with the students, and I think the students learn a lot of skills and enjoy interacting with our bakers.”

Although a coffee shop likely won’t be implemented for a couple of years, staff members are already brainstorming the possibilities. A room with a sliding glass window has been set aside to serve as the coffee shop’s space within the school. 

Jenna Viscomi, Pinckney administrator, said knocking down one of the room’s walls could create an open-concept cafe space where people can read or study. Another idea would be to put up a small stage for local high school jazz bands to perform in the space.

The coffee shop would be open to the public. It would serve baked goods from the school’s bakery, and students would be trained as the baristas, Viscomi said. 

Staff members are planning for the public to be able to purchase goods from the bakery soon.

For now, the bakery produces baked goods for Lawrence Public Schools, with one student helping in the kitchen and one student helping with deliveries. 

Daylen Medlen, who started working as the first student baker in January, enjoys chopping butter and filling cupcake liners with batter.

“I did learn how to make brownies,” Medlen said. “I love brownies.”

District schools send an order to the bakery about a week in advance. The bakery bakes two or three items daily, including scones, muffins, breadsticks, rolls and dessert bars. Last week, the bakery was baking about 5,000 breadsticks for the upcoming week.

Deliveries usually run four days a week, once or twice a day. With each trip, the bakery delivers to three to four schools. 

“We usually try to get to all the schools on Monday and Tuesday for breakfast, then it’s Wednesday, Thursday, sometimes Friday morning for lunches,” said John Bass, bakery manager.

The bakery emphasizes providing fresh, locally sourced baked goods to the community. They source flour from Hudson Cream and Stone & Sparrow Flour and Mill, the latter of which delivers the flour within a day of milling. 

“The nutrient density is really well maintained when you are using freshly milled,” said Pantaleon Florez, local farmer and Farm 2 School coordinator. 

Medlen, who has been a student at Pinckney for three years, will move on to the Project SEARCH program next year, which has local sites at KU and Lawrence Memorial Hospital to secure employment for people with disabilities. 

“It’s sometimes getting students to realize that, you know, we don’t always start with the job we want. We have to kind of build up to get there and just show that you have the skills,” said Jennifer Burnes, transition specialist for the C-Tran program. “This is huge to develop confidence and additional skills, and how to communicate with people in the workplace, all of that.”

Hannah Loub (she/her), reporting intern with The Lawrence Times since January 2026, is a journalism and global and international studies major at the University of Kansas. She is currently the lead digital producer for KUJH and worked as a beat reporter for the University Daily Kansan. Read her work for the Times here.

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Carter Gaskins (he/him) has been a photographer for The Lawrence Times since April 2021. He has also been a photographer for 10-plus years in photojournalism and sports.

Check out more of his work at Gaskins-Photography.com. See his work for the Times here.

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