I have only given you a brief glimpse into the ten years I spent supervising the Joseph Schools lunchroom...I loved my job and the freedom that came with it to serve good, homemade food...With backing from the administration and my competent staff, we made meals from scratch; hot rolls, pizza with our own crust, oven fried chicken, baking powder biscuits, topped with hamburger gravy, cookies, cinnamon rolls, fruit crisp and a long time tradition that we continued was a once a month birthday cake...Every child whose birthday fell in the month received a "pin on" tag as they came through line and received a piece of cake with a candle on it, making them stand out and feel special on this day...So that no one was left out we included summer birthdays at the end of the school year...Many students, when asked what their favorite class in school was, answered "Lunch."
Along with the changing of admin about every three years, other changes took place...The classified staff formed a union (to protect themselves.)..Less funding from the state, so programs and staff continued to be cut...Moral was low but one good thing was, that it caused people to stick together and make the best of a bad situation...We learned to laugh at the ineptness of the people in charge and worked harder at our jobs...As a person and a professional I grew in untold ways...I still have many good memories of those days.
We kept the lunch count up by serving home cooked food, but were being undercut by the federal commodity program, when they started sending us chicken nuggets, instead of "real chicken," and other prepared foods...When the admin stopped supporting our program...When the school board started asking, "why can't you be self supporting?" (I never got a clear answer on what they meant by that.)..I could see that to save money, lunches were soon going to be "thaw, heat, serve" or "open a can, heat, serve."..Home cooked food was on the way out!
Dealing with all of this craziness took its toll on everyone involved and to make matters worse my own personal health went into a tail spin...Hugs To All...OWAV:)
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