After working for 23 painstaking and time-consuming years as a lunch lady for the school, Stephanie White returns to her role as a Food and Nutrition director. White had previously been the director for 13 years up until 2011 but is ready to come back for another round. 

“It’s been challenging since 2011, I was just getting my feet wet, moving into the position of Food Service Director and they passed the Healthy Hunger,” White said, “But it’s fun.” 

For this year, White has a couple of goals for school lunches and one of those goals is making the lunches healthier. 

“We’re trying to implement more local produce, shipped in and whatnot which is kind of hard in Michigan through the winter months,” White said.

White has been working to add new meals to the school lunches and better ingredients for those lunches.  

She is doing more taste testing in order to find different foods that kids will want to eat. 

When not serving students, White loves to spend her free time gardening and solving puzzles. 

“I love to garden. My flowerbeds and a whole [vegetable] garden,” White said. 

White graduated from Chelsea High School but never went to college because of personal reasons. 

“I started a family out of high school,” White said. 

White chose to work in the Stockbridge district because the kids were enrolled in it.

“I originally started because I had kids in the district,” White said.  “I worked when they were in school and I was off when they were on vacation.”