For many students, what they eat at school constitutes the best and most nutritious meals they will have all day.
Eyewitness News visited Horace Mann Middle School to talk with its lead cook, along with school chefs from Nitro High and Sissonville Middle schools, to discover if what they observe in the lunch line backs up that argument.
"There's always been a need but the need gets more and more," Melissa Boggess, Nitro High School cook said. "That the kids seem to be hungry when they come in, like on a Monday morning. They come in and they're like, 'I'm hungry. I haven't had anything all weekend or my parents were asleep and I just come on to school.' I mean, it's different things like that but there is a need for us to feed the kids because they're not getting it at home."
Lisa Peal, a cook for Horace Mann, said school food used to not be a big deal for students.
"You know, you just go through the line and it was like, lunch," she said. "But now, it's like a very important part of the day. You've got to make sure, they need to eat."
Marlene Sizemore, a cook at Sissonville Middle, agreed with Peal, saying some parents put the responsibility on the schools now to ensure their children are fed.
"When we were on strike two years ago we were standing on the picket line and a gentleman drove by and said go back to work so his kid could eat," Sizemore said. "And I thought to myself, is that not your responsibility as the parent to see that your child eats? But society changes it from their own responsibility and puts the responsibility on the school, on the cook, on the service personnel, on whoever wants to take care of the child."
The cooks say they are very aware of the role they play in many students' lives. And they work hard to identify the youngsters who may be in a vulnerable position to make sure their basic needs are met.
"You know the ones that really need the extra, you know, little scoop of mashed potatoes," Peal said. "Or, you know the ones that need a little extra, you know, love. You love them. You do."
"You watch the kid every day when they come in," Boggess said. "And they want to take everything that they can possibly get their hands on. And then you watch them when they sit down to eat and they eat like they are starved to death. And I have went to talk to counselors before and asked, you know, them to maybe check on the kid at home and different things and we learn these kids and we know who's in need."
Sizemore said several students at her school need extra portions.
"I've been told by the principal and I've been told by a teacher, especially there's two children at ours that they want them to have extra," she said. "So we set aside a meal a day for that child to take somewhere else besides in the cafeteria at a later time to ensure that when they go home that they've been fed."
Kanawha County places a major emphasis on its meal program. Every student in the system, regardless of income, can eat breakfast and lunch absolutely free. Superintendent Ron Duerring said it's critically important to care for the basic needs of each student so they can have the best opportunity to learn.
"We have to have some objective means of testing kids and seeing whether or not we're making great strides," Duerring said. "Are we improving our graduation rate? Are we reducing our dropout rate? But there's a lot of things in there that are not measurable that people never see. The students that come every day who we're feeding and clothing and helping them, the trauma that they've gone through."
Without a meal in their stomachs, district officials agree that students can't perform as well in the classrooms.
"It's the most critical thing that I think the school system does," Diane Miller, Kanawha County Schools Child Nutrition Director, said. "Without the ability to be nutritionally healthy and the wellness aspect of their day I don't think they can learn in math second period if they haven't had something to eat that morning."
The school meal program in the state's largest system is big business. Last school year, through 174 days in class, Kanawha County served 2.2 million breakfasts and 3.1 million lunches. Even with declining enrollment, both of those numbers when up three percent from the previous year.
To get an idea of how much food is consumed, Kanawha County Schools purchased romaine lettuce and tomatoes locally, using Gritts Farm and other vendors. To get what the system needed, KCS spent more than $275,000 in local produce for its 68 schools.
"The emphasis that we try to take on every day is to make sure that the students have variety, make sure that we're using all the best nutritional value meals that we can put together," Miller said. "We're trying to source locally, our products. And, we're also trying to accommodate the needs of the students each and every day so they have a choice."