Lorraine Daniels has been working in the cafeterias of East Orange, New Jersey, public schools for thirty-nine years. Some of the children she fed long ago have returned to the district as educators:
They say, “Oh my God, I remember when you used to cook those hot wings for us!” It just makes my heart glad that I encouraged them. It’s hard for these kids. They have a lot of poverty, and they need encouragement to let them know they can be somebody.
Daniels says she and her team “make miracles come out of those kitchens.” But Sodexo, the gigantic for-profit company that manages the district’s meal program, is exploiting their dedication. “The more we do, the more Sodexo gives us to do,” thirty-year East Orange K-12 food service veteran Marian Vann told the school board in February. “There’s been times where I’m doing two computers at a time — running both of the food lines at the same time.”
Pressured conditions like these are commonplace in K-12 cafeterias, with school meal programs experiencing dysfunction due to increasingly dire staffing shortages. In a recent report from the School Nutrition Association, a majority of surveyed districts identified staffing as a “significant challenge.” “There’s a shortage every day because it doesn’t pay well,” says Roxanne Beissel, who earns $15 an hour cooking in Hastings, Minnesota, schools. The combination of high stress and low wages, Beissel explains, “is definitely not appealing to a lot of people.”
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