Last week, we told you about the increasing role of schools in meeting students’ basic needs like food and clothing.
In addition to teachers, it is often the cafeteria workers who see and hear the often-alarming situations that many students are in.
“I love the lunch ladies. We love them, They're really great, like really great. They're super nice and give you as much food as you need, and if you want extra you just ask them, and they'll give you extra,” Horace Mann Middle School eighth grader Molly Bowen said.
School cooks are on the front lines of fighting against hunger childhood hunger. We recently sat down with a trio of veteran school kitchen employees who shared stories of looking out for at-risk students and the relationships they forge with them.
“Some of them will say, you know it's a tough weekend for some of them. You know, they'll say, sorry. You have a couple that, you know, that will say could I have a little extra because it was a tough weekend,” Horace Mann Middle School cook Lisa Peal said.
Bowen said she has seen some of her fellow students deal with problems at home.
“I do have some friends that have problems with food at home. And it does get pretty bad to the point where they don't eat like good stuff. Like they eat popcorn for dinner and like Cheetos for breakfast and it's just starting to get really bad because at this point the parents are giving their child their needs and nutrition and all that,” Bowen said.
But it often goes beyond just filling hungry stomachs. The stories they hear can be downright chilling.
“I had one little girl one time she came up to me and said my mommy's dead, and, I'm like shocked. And come to find out she was dead,” Nitro High School cook Melissa Boggess said.
“I had a little boy come to me several weeks ago talking about his home breaking up. His parents were separating, and you know, that weighs heavy on us as cooks. Or any service personnel or teacher in the school system, you don't understand that you're carrying the weight of those kids’ heartbreak home with you,” Sissonville Middle School cook Marlene Sizemore said.
For these school cooks, situations like these make their jobs a labor of love.
“If we don't feed them and we don't take time to put a little passion and a little love into the foods that we serve every day, then these students will leave for the school day and not know where their next meal is going to come from,” Kanawha County Schools Child Nutrition Director Diane Miller said.
“I feel like they kind of nurture the kids and make them, they don't get it at home, like the nurture at home. They kind of like make the kids a little happier and so they can progress onto this other stuff and not be all negative and all that,” Bowen said.
”When I'm cooking, especially like on the days like when you have the soup or you have something that you have to make from scratch. You put that extra love, you know, in it and you want it to taste good. You want it to fill their bellies with warmth and you want them to go home thinking, that was a good bowl of soup,” Cook said.
The job of feeding students just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
In 2011-12, Kanawha County had just over 30 percent of students eating breakfast at schools and more than 65 percent eating a school-prepared lunch.
But this year, although enrollment id down by more than 3,000 students, more than half eat school breakfast and seven out of every 10 students eat a school lunch.
Those are the highest percentages in a decade.