Diane Buchanan has been recognized as the 2022 Alaska School Nutrition Association Administrator of the Year. The statewide recognition highlights her commitment and dedication to school nutrition and feeding thousands of children every single day in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, according to a press release.
During the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic, Buchanan and her team stepped up to provide ‘Get It and Go’ lunches when schools were in remote learning, juggled supply chain issues of not receiving food, and kept school meals served each day that school has been open in person. At the start of the pandemic, Governor Dunleavy announced the shift of all schools to remote learning after spring break and district leadership asked how they could provide meals to students, since so many families rely on school meals. KPBSD offered ‘Get It and Go Meals’ and an online ordering service that began the Tuesday after the 2020 spring break.
Buchanan told KSRM:
“During the pandemic, our staff, they stepped up to the plate and immediately put out Get It and Go meals for every student that wanted a meal. We decided it was better than Grab and Go. Get It and Go was a more delicate name for it. That staff worked tirelessly. They all congregated in different kitchens, and they would stand out there in the cold and the rain and the snow and hand out all those meals for an hour each day.”
Buchanan adds:
“I enjoy my job just because I know I’m fulfilling a need that’s in our community. Kids cannot learn without eating. When you see students that come in, you know that they haven’t eaten all weekend. You feel that in your heart that you were doing the right thing and you have been put in a place to do that through these children.”
Buchanan talks about the challenges faced with feeding students in such a large school district:
“We do weekly flights out to across the water to our remote schools and we have daily deliveries to local schools and weekly. It all gets out there. We have had some problems with transportation, but nothing that we could not resolve.”
Buchanan has, for the past thirty years, worked in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. She started as a student nutrition cashier in 1992 at Soldotna Junior High. For the past six years, she has served as the Student Nutrition Services Supervisor, where she oversees food nutrition services, school kitchen management, free and reduced lunch applications, and menus among other responsibilities.
