Cooking for the kids

Kathy Scholten, who worked in child nutrition at Valley Springs Elementary, has a buffet of memories from that time.

“They were advertising for help, and I thought I could do that,” she said.

Scholten initially began working in the school kitchen two hours a day, making a whopping $3.35 an hour. “That’s how I got my foot in the door to get insurance,” she recalled

Sje touched on how important her job was to students.

“Some of those kids, it was their only meal, probably,” she said. “They were always appreciated.”

Scholten and her husband, Keith, both went to school elsewhere. although her own children attended Valley Springs Elementary, which she was elated about.

“It was a close-knit family here,” she said.