By Sara Oppenheimer
For Charleston Gazette-Mail
The Riverside High School cafeteria staff stood outside the school’s entrance in Belle Wednesday morning sorting boxes of food provided by Kanawha County Schools’ Child Nutrition into plastic bags to hand to families affected by Sunday’s historic flooding, along with any supplemental food they could provide.
“It’s all very stressful for people right now,” Marsha Burns, cafeteria manager at Riverside High School, said as she bagged meal kits on a plastic roller cart. “A lot of people lost a lot of things, they have a lot of things to get back, as soon as possible, for the kids. This isn’t much, but it helps. It’s a little bit of stress off of everything.”
Because of flooding and damage in the Upper Kanawha Valley communities after Sunday’s flood, Kanawha County Schools announced Tuesday that Riverside High School and its surrounding feeder schools will delay their start-of-school opening from Wednesday to next Monday, affecting around 3,500 students.
KCS organized food pickup stations with three days worth of meals and cleaning supplies at each of the nine locations affected by the delay within 24 hours of the announcement, providing around 150 three-day meal boxes per school. Despite several of their own homes and families being affected by the flood, staff at Riverside High School and surrounding feeder schools, such as Riverside High School cook Cynthia Dunn, still came to help students and families with supplies and aid.
“I had 6 inches of flooding in my basement. There’s mud up to here in there,” Dunn said, holding her fingers out, three inches apart. “I know people who got it worse, and we’ve still got work today, so we’re out here.”
Several staff members lost power to their homes, which was regained Tuesday night. As soon as they got their power back, they said they were notified about the food drive.
Missed days don’t have to be made up
The three missed school days don’t have to be made up by students, according to Chris Williams, KCS director of communications. He said it’s as if the schools had to close because they had no water or electric service in the buildings, and the West Virginia Department of Education gave the OK.
Despite this, Wednesday was first-day-of-school business as usual for KCS staff, according to Scott Canada, the principal at Midland Trail Elementary School
“This was a regular workday for us, ” Canada said while organizing cleaning supplies, “but our staff [members] are here to help to make sure that our kids and our family [are] taken care of. First day of the year prep is still happening, but we’ve shifted gears.”
Staff at the schools also prepared supplemental materials outside of what was provided by KCS, with Riverside High School providing secondary, smaller meal boxes along with the standard boxes and Midland Trail Elementary offering backpacks to any students who might need them.
“We had some spare backpacks in storage that were already filled and ready to go,” Canada said, “and we thought it would be a good idea to set them out, just in case anyone needed them.”
The boxes
The boxes provided were similar to the standard summer supplement 7-day meal kits.
“These are the same types of boxes that we send out during the summer and emergencies,” Burns said. “They’re not as up to standard as normal, so we tried to add a few things here and there.”
The boxes provided two meals per day, breakfast and lunch, with milk featured with each meal. Each lunch contained a fruit or a vegetable and a meat or other protein, along with a grain.
The meals were provided specifically for students enrolled at the nine schools.
The schools affected are:
- Belle Elementary School, 401 E. 6th St., Belle
- Cedar Grove Elementary School, 200 John St., Cedar Grove
- Dupont Middle School, 1 Panther Drive, Belle
- Malden Elementary School, 4001 Salines Drive, Charleston
- Mary Ingles Elementary School, 559 Big Bottom Hollow Road, Tad
- Midland Trail Elementary School, 200 Ferry St., Belle
- Pratt Elementary School, 201 Pratt Ave., Pratt
- Riverside High School, 1 Warrior Way, Belle
- Sharon Dawes Elementary School, 5118 Cabin Creek Road, Miami
Read more from HDMedia, here.
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