Published: October 03, 2008 05:33 pm         

Warrior Elementary cafeteria racks up perfect health scores

By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



The cafeteria at Warrior Elementary School has made the grade — six times in a row.

This week, the lunchroom received a 100 from the Jefferson County Department of Health. It is the sixth perfect score in a row.

Melanie Stubbs, cafeteria manager, said the lunchroom gets surprise inspections three times a year, just like restaurants that are open year-round.

Stubbs said the key to the lunchroom’s success is teamwork. Besides Stubbs, there are three other full-time employees in the cafeteria: Susan Stewart has been there for eight years, Gina Barnett for six years and Sonya Chamblee for three years.

“Everybody works together and cleans as they go. It makes a big difference,” said Stubbs. “They want to do it right. They don’t want to make the kids sick.”

Stewart said another key to the lunchroom’s consistently high scores is constantly monitoring the temperatures of both hot and cold foods. She said it takes all of the women working together as a team.

“Really for us it’s just everyday,” Barnett said. “It’s just what we do.”

“We have our routines and our groove,” Chamblee added.

She said another key is that all four women love the 280 children they feed twice a day.

“That makes a big difference,” Stubbs said. “They’re all precious.”

The women are Child Nutrition Program employees, but Stubbs still likes being called the well-known term “lunchroom lady.”

Stubbs has been feeding school children for 16 years. She has managed the Warrior lunchroom for six years.

Previously, she was the assistant manager at Mortimer Jordan High School for three years and an employee at Kermit Johnson Elementary School for seven years.

Stubbs said about 93 percent of Warrior’s students eat the school lunch every day. It’s not the greasy pizza, burgers and French fries that many adults remember from the school lunchroom.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, Stubbs was prepping cups of tomatoes and carrot sticks for lunch that day. In the back, Barnett and Chamblee were preparing pizza, but it had wheat crust and less fat.

“We have to count sugar grams and fat grams now,” said Stubbs. “We’re trying to introduce new things slowly and change the meals completely.”

The Alabama State Department of Education Child Nutrition Program sets the guidelines that all public schools must follow.

In recent years, the program has been working to fight childhood obesity and improve overall health in children by requiring schools to provide healthier foods.

The process began at Warrior two years ago. The women daily prepare fresh fruits and vegetables like apples, cantaloupe, bananas, watermelon, tomatoes and carrots.

And the kids love it.

Stubbs said it sometimes takes a day or two for the students to warm up to new items.

But according to Barnett and Chamblee, the kids now devour “down-home stuff” like steamed broccoli (without the cheese), turnip greens, black-eyed peas, steamed cabbage and mixed vegetables.

The lunchroom employees got their own treat recently when first-graders came through the line holding signs congratulating them on the six consecutive scores of 100.

“We got tears,” said Chamblee.