Without This Team, Children Are Not Ready To Learn

Each school day, long before the sun rises above the horizon, a team of people arrives at each of the school parking lots. What follows is nothing short of a symphony of harmonized activity all timed down to the minute. The work continues throughout the morning and early afternoon until they prepare to head home by making sure everything is immaculate, prepared for the next morning where they will do it all again.

Who is this team of dedicated workers? LaRue County Schools food service team.

Helping to coordinate this incredible team among the broader Hawk Family is Stephanie Utley, LaRue County Schools Director of School Nutrition. As she explains it and everyone else in the district knows to be true, this work is vital to the success of a school day, “My teams are dedicated and excellent at what they do. We know that children need fuel to learn, so we do everything we can to ensure that basic need is taken care of.”

Each school has its own individual food service team with its own manager who helps oversee operations specific to their building. Much of what goes unnoticed according to Utley is the sheer amount of logistics, “Consider for a moment all that goes into feeding over 2,000 children a day, which is 4,000 meals total. Food must be ordered, delivered, organized, stored in freezers/coolers, and then prepared on a daily basis. For most families, the task of planning and preparing what their own family will eat for dinner each night of the week can sometimes be overwhelming. My team takes care of that for the kids in our Hawk Family every school day.”

In closing, as with all government organizations who receive federal funding, there are many rules shaping how food service can operate. One of the avenues Utley is most proud of is relationships with local farmers enabling more local food to make its way into the cafeterias of LCS, “This year we had the opportunity to partner with local farmer Travis Cleaver. We were able to purchase beef from him that was raised in Hart County, butchered in Adair County, and then served in our cafeteria. As much as we are able, we are growing in the use of local food from local farmers for our kids. It’s good for our local farmers and it’s good for our kids to know where their food comes from.”