There are many integral parts to Rolla High School. Everywhere, there are different roles and positions of people; administrators, students, teachers as well as additional faculty members. One faction of these faculty members are everyone’s favorite food servers and cashiers, the lunch ladies. While the lunch ladies are not mythical beings that only appear in blurry photographs taken by some questionable folks, who hasn’t ever been curious to know what else lunch ladies do? Or how they feel about students? Or what their opinion of the food served at RHS is?

One would be surprised at the amount of work that the lunch ladies put in in order to serve the RHS student body.

“I get here at five [a.m.], my workers get here at six. I’d say there is a good four hours that go into lunch preparation, and maybe an hour and a half that goes into breakfast,” Beth Jette, the administrator of the lunch ladies said. “Afterwards, we stay until about one thirty or two cleaning up.”

From the time they show up, they are constantly working on preparing the day’s lunch.

“Preparation [for one lunch day] starts days before; some ladies show up at six a.m. and work non-stop on the day’s lunch,” Nan Witt, one of the lunch ladies said.

There is also lots of additional work done by the lunch ladies outside of cooking for students from 10:37 until 11:56.

“[Other than lunch], we cook breakfast, but we also cook for school banquets, CORE luncheons, and board meetings. We also do a lot of cooking for the elementary schools,” Lisa Buchanan, one of the lunch ladies said.

Some students might be curious as to what all the lunch ladies are able to see, and what they are able to tell, or whether the lunch ladies think we are all a bunch of ungrateful brats who don’t appreciate their hard work.

“One thing we do that most people don’t think about is take care of the students in a way; if a student has no money in their lunch account because of a situation at home, we will put money in their accounts. We also do a lot of watching out for eating disorders in students, and signs of depression. We kind of regard ourselves as secondary moms to the students,” Witt said. “One part I think is really neat about being a lunch lady is being able to see kids come in as a sophomore and watch them grow up and become more mature.”

Lunch ladies are also rather aware of what is a popular food item in the school.

“Bosco Sticks are popular; most of the time though [the most popular item] is any chicken product, like chicken rings or chicken strips or chicken patties, anything like that. Pan Pizzas are also popular too,” Jette said.

One of the greatest curiosities of any student is probably what the lunch ladies themselves think of the food.

“I know that expectations are not very high; I was a teenager who went to school and ate at a cafeteria too. But honestly, we constantly try our very best to give the kids a healthy nutritious lunch that is good tasting and that they will like. It’s hard to do that because we serve over 600 people a day; not even the busiest restaurants can do that,” Jette said. “We’re also limited because we have lots of regulations and minimums to meet before we can serve it. We’re not allowed to serve white bread; we have vegetable and fruit minimums we have to meet each day; despite all this, we really do care about the students… giving them a good, satisfying food experience is our top priority. I feel that our lunch program is one of the best in the local area.”

Regardless of how the food actually is, the lunch ladies certainly do their best for us every day.

“I think that we do a good job keeping it efficient and hot, I also think that considering the prices of the food, we do a really good job, and I think we’re good at having a variety in our lunches,” Witt said.

One might also be curious as to how the lunch ladies decide what to cook each day.

“We don’t [decide] really. There is a lunch supervisor who has to meet a different quota of fruits and grains and vegetables and stuff like that. They probably just decide what would be good and do their best to go along that stuff,” Lori Oberly, a lunch lady said.

Finally, on the hot controversy bed of the recently added larger trays.

“We got rid [of the smaller trays] because we think they caused a lot of inefficiency in the lunch line because we had to take the students trays and put the food on there for them. Now we just put everything on a plate and we prepare a lot of stuff before lunch, so it really helps make lunch quicker and gives kids more time to eat, which is one of our top priorities,” Jette said.