Great Crossing High School cafeteria manager receives national award

There are two hours until the first lunch wave at Great Crossing High School, and Maggie Oswalt and her staff are filling bags, cutting fruit and vegetables, and plating the chicken salad.

“We don’t want to just serve from box to oven,” Oswalt said, “so we do as much home making as we can,” she continued.

Oswalt was recently recognized as the Southeast Region Manager of the Year by the School Nutrition Association.

“Very shocked, but very grateful,” she said of winning the award.

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Maggie and her staff of 10 others are feeding lunch and breakfast to more than 1,000 students here who are choosing the school lunch (and breakfast) options almost daily.

“We churn out about 15 to 1,600 meals per day,” she said as if that was no big deal. The meals have to meet a state nutritional standard, and kids who eat for free must take the entire meal, which means they’re getting the full benefits of each item.

A federal grant allows Scott County to offer free meals to every student, and Maggie, a nutrition specialist, is one of many cafeteria managers in the district who’ve taken on the task of organizing all of it with great pride.

“The last thing a child should have to worry about when they come to school is ‘how am I going to eat, or how am I going to pay for it?’” Maggie said.

The award recognition is nice, and she’ll gladly accept, but the real reward is what she’s seeing from these kids.

“They’re conversing while enjoying a meal, their grades are going up, performance is going up, so yes, it’s a big deal,” she said of the results of these meals.

Maggie said she knows which kids have food allergies and makes certain to find them and steer them away from anything that might have come in contact with something that could potentially hurt them.

“They’re high school kids, so they’re usually pretty good about that,” she said.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment, or at least right up there with winning that award, was when a parent called and asked for a recipe because her child had liked it so much.

“If it’s something new, and they loved and it’s healthy, then it’s something I want them to eat,” Oswalt said.