The trials and tribulations of working as a ‘Lunch Lady’
CLAY TWP — Seeing children get emotional or react negatively to the food being served isn’t what makes being a cafeteria worker hard at Dassa McKinney Elementary School. It’s not being able to stop what you’re doing to lend a hand to the situation.
The struggle is felt regularly by Amanda Zanella, who has worked at Dassa McKinney for a year and has gotten to know many of the students through serving them daily.
“If they’re having a hard day, you want to be there to console them,” Zanella said.
It’s the way the food staff in all of Moniteau School District go above and beyond in their duties that leads the district’s director of food services Carrie Pletcher to apply for an award through the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank each year.
Moniteau School District earned bronze in the food bank’s Child Hunger Hero Awards this year, a reward that recognizes schools and community organizations that provide food to youths in their areas. Pletcher said her department collaborates with the Pittsburgh food bank to provide meals through the district’s weekend backpack program and the district is a host site for the food bank’s summer food distributions.
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank recognized 50 schools and community sponsors this year who have gone above and beyond to serve meals to children. The Child Hunger Heroes evaluates applicants on their involvement in programs including school meals, summer food, afterschool meals, weekend backpacks and school pantry programs.
Moniteau was the only school district in Butler County to be recognized, and Pletcher said it’s all thanks to her food staff.
“They are very underrated, they work hard,” Pletcher said. “A lot of people think 'lunch lady,' but you come work as a lunch lady, see how hard it can be.”
The lunch ladies, whom don’t mind the term although there have been some men working the cafeteria over the years, share the sentiment that the perks of the job outweigh the negative elements. Pletcher said a lot of her staff have started the job to be closer to their own children when they start at the elementary school, herself and Zanella included.
But the job became a little more intensive in recent years when the state School Breakfast Program began making morning meals free to students, which Pletcher said nearly doubled the amount of breakfast meals prepared at Dassa McKinney.
So the term “lunch ladies” has become a little outdated.
“It’s all these guys cooking for about 400 people for breakfast and over 400 for lunch,” said Chris Stewart, food manager at Dassa McKinney Elementary. “Timing is a lot of it, the presentation — if you don’t have your food looking good a lot of kids won’t want it.”
A lot of the food served in Moniteau School District is prepackaged, so the items just have to be warmed up before being served.
But several people on the food staff still have to get in pretty early to get things ready. Most of the food staff at Dassa McKinney and the middle and high school are part-time, Pletcher said, working four-and-a-half to five-and-a-half hours per school day.
Stewart usually gets to the school a little after 7 a.m. to start prepping for the day. She said the school operates on a four-week menu rotation for breakfast and a five-week menu rotation for lunch, and she makes the food orders based on the needs for each week.
Pletcher said the school district has to follow state and federal nutritional guidelines when it comes to choosing menus, but the most popular items are General Tso’s chicken, orange chicken, watermelon, grapes and the doughnuts in the menu rotation.
In addition to the nutritional guidelines, workers of the kitchen go through an eight-hour food safety course each year, and managers like Stewart go through a serve-safe course every five years and get regular updates from the state.
And although they are administrators, Pletcher and Stewart are no strangers to putting on an apron when necessary. The food staff is almost always in need of more employees, according to Pletcher.
“I need ladies desperately … right now schools are one short,” Pletcher said. “We need substitutes for our schools.”
Pletcher said the reason many people start working in a school cafeteria is the same reason many stop working there — their children start attending the school, and then move onto the middle school after a few years.
But the longtime workers said the perks of the job are good enough to keep them in it.
“The kids are all friendly,” said Audrey Morris, who has worked at Dassa McKinney for 11 years. “Mine (shift) is 8:15 to 2, so then you’ve got the whole afternoon and you’re off on weekends and holidays and all summer, which is nice.”
Misty Claypoole, who has worked in the cafeteria at Dassa McKinney for nine years, echoed Morris.
“It’s close to home, it’s pretty cool working with the kids,” Claypoole said.
In addition to providing meals for students to have over weekends through its backpack program, Moniteau School District is a host site for the Pittsburgh food bank’s summer food distributions. These distributions serve dozens of people each week through the summer, many of whom live in rural areas where food access is not as good as urban places.
The backpack program is one of the main ways the school district provides food for children who may otherwise be lacking.
“We give children who sign up for it a bag full of food for the weekend,” Pletcher said. “Two breakfasts — a breakfast for Saturday and one for Sunday — two dinners and a snack for each day as well, and a juice and fruit. We distribute them every Thursday afternoon.”
Dassa McKinney Elementary has a room dedicated to the food for the backpack program, items that come from donations and from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. The school district purchases food from the food bank, but it also offers grants that can help pay for items and other services, Pletcher said.
The summer food distributions are completely through the Pittsburgh food bank, with Moniteau being the host site.
“We did serve meals over the summer along with the Pittsburgh Food Bank once a week, five-day boxes,” Pletcher said. “They provide the food and everything. I supplied the volunteers and we altogether packed up and delivered them at the high school.”
Pletcher said many of the volunteers at the distributions were also staff of the school district — another attribute that led the district to receive Child Hunger Hero Award recognition.
“The Child Hunger Hero Award Program is our thank you to food service professionals,” said Kelsey Gross, director of Child Nutrition Programs for the food bank.
