By Staff
Melissa Cason
Thanksgiving came early for the students and parents of Russellville Elementary this week.
Excited and hungry parents and students lined up Friday for their traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Lunchroom manager Joann Pearson said the lunchroom staff began planning the meal more than a month ago.
"It takes us a month to plan this," Pearson said. "We have to make sure we have enough food to serve the students and their parents."
Pearson said the school elected to have the meal early this year to accommodate students who have siblings at other schools.
"The other schools are doing their meal on Nov. 21, and we wanted to give parents the opportunity to go to that school if they have other children," Pearson said.
Over a period of three days, the lunch ladies served up 1,200 meals.
"We started on Wednesday with the third grade, and we feed fourth grade Thursday, and we finished up with fifth grade on Friday," Pearson said.
She said the students who were not eating Thanksgiving dinner with their families received a hot sack lunch to eat in their rooms to give the students more time with their families.
"Usually it's so rushed with the students and their parents," Pearson said. "Each student had 45 minutes with their family instead of the standard 20 minutes."
Pearson said the school has been really supportive of the new method of serving dinner, and they plan to serve the meals with the family like this next year.
"This may be the only time a parent or grandparent gets to come eat with their child or grandchild," Pearson said. "And, we want this time to be special."
In order to get all the meals prepared, Pearson said subs were called in to help.
"Dina Parrish, Beck Love, and Shae Mansell came in to help us this week," Pearson said. "We could not have done this without them."
The regular lunchroom staff at RES includes Martha Phillips, Angie James, Joann Pearson, Sandra Clark, Susan Love and Caroline Patrick.