Behind the walls of West Albany’s kitchen, three women efficiently layer chicken and hamburger patties onto hundreds of buns one by one, anticipating the cascade of hungry high school students to come in less than an hour. 

     Not long after the pandemic started, West received financial aid for the purpose of providing free lunches for students. With the burden of financial troubles eliminated, the number of students flooding into the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat during lunch rapidly increased to almost three times the amount before COVID-19. More kids being provided with food is ultimately a positive situation, but it also necessitates busier work days for the kitchen staff. 

     At 9:30 a.m. sharp, kitchen manager Kimberly Hill and her coworkers Mary Gaspard and Donna Affinito get to work on putting together anywhere from 300 to 670 lunches for the day, depending on the insight Hill gains from the number of leftover lunches from previous days. The volume of students that get lunches from the kitchen can fluctuate wildly from week to week, so the amount of food that needs to be ordered at the beginning of the week is usually a guessing game.

     The trio has made a variety of main courses this year, in both sack lunch and hot lunch form. Providing a steady stream of high schoolers with food is no small feat, but the kitchen staff has a quick and structured system to keep everything running smoothly. 

     Nacho chips are scooped into their paper dishes and buns are laid out on the massive steel island in the kitchen, creating a blanket of bread. Finished sandwiches are stacked into bins and placed in the buffet with a covering before lunch or wrapped and packed in a brown paper bag for sack lunches. The rhythm of productivity becomes a back-and-forth between the island in the kitchen and the buffet area, and before long, the three women are fully prepared for lunch. In addition to the responsibility of making the main course, the buffet is fully stocked with sauces, utensils, milk, and fruit for kids to take. 

      The buffet is aided by a group of 12 students in addition to the kitchen staff during lunch to help serve the freshly prepared food. 

      While the rush of the free lunch crowd is overwhelming at times, Hill has not yet asked for additional staff to help with kitchen prep work. The unpredictable patterns of how many kids will take a lunch from week to week makes her hesitant to request more workers, especially because her and her coworkers are managing well with their current system. For the time being, the trio of hard-working kitchen staff resolves to take on the daily responsibilities that come with preparing food for hundreds of high school students. 

      Behind the walls of West Albany’s kitchen, these three women continue to overcome the stressors of a mid-pandemic year to provide hundreds of hungry kids with meals, day after day.