Johnson for the Save

By: Aleks Stacy

On the first day back to school in 2024, Culver Community High/ Middle school found itself under a bomb threat. This threat required all students be evacuated.

When all students were sent to the elementary school, the majority of the staff were given jobs and helped organize the chaos. One of these chaotic jobs was held by the director of the cafeteria Mrs.Gretchen Johnson.

“My concern was that we evacuated the middle/high school students before the high school students had a chance to go for lunch.  I was in communication with Mr. Berndt, Mr Pugh, and kitchen managers Dickey, Thomas, and Pranger throughout the situation,” said  Johnson. Johnson is the director of food services at Culver and is responsible for making sure all students get a well-balanced meal for lunch, so this event caused her to troubleshoot. 

Her biggest challenge was that the evacuation was unexpected and didn’t allow the lunch ladies much time to think about how to feed a gym full of hungry high school students. As well, the disruption to the elementary students had to be taken into concern. But Johnson’s quick thinking got everything done. 

“Because this evacuation took place during meal service, the cafeteria staff turned ovens off when leaving. Therefore, our options at the time were limited by what we could serve quickly without much preparation.  We were fortunate that our elementary after school snack program menu item for that afternoon was a lunchable. This lunchable meets the required components with us adding fruit and milk. We also added on a cup of pudding of their choice to take if they wanted,” said Johnson. 

So when the elementary was done with lunch. The cafeteria staff was able to have the high school students go through the line by grade and get enough food to hold them over through the evacuation. 

Many students expressed how pleased they were to have gotten something to eat during the evacuation. They were grateful for the cafeteria because otherwise the rest of the afternoon would have been difficult to sit through. 

“I feel as though the school did the best that they could with what resources and short notice they were given. It’s not everyday the elementary cafeteria workers have to feed pre-k through 5th grade as well as all of high school. So considering everyone was fed and safe, I think it worked out pretty well,” said senior Charley Howard.