GREENSBORO, N.C. — As cafeteria workers and Guilford County Schools hashed out their disagreements, it's taken a team to make sure students are getting fed.
Folks at North Carolina A&T heard about the need and stepped in to help feed the students at the STEM Early College, Four Middle College, and Aggie Academy.
Dr. Nakeshia Williams, Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at NC A&T said as soon as she heard from the principals, she wanted to meet the need.
"All the principals needed support with feeding the students for breakfast and lunch. So, I contacted our campus partner here with Sodexo. I arranged for them to have breakfast and lunch yesterday and today until the strike ends to ensure students are fed," said Williams.
Dr. Williams said students are going to two different dining halls on A&T's campus. This gives them the ability to handle the capacity of those schools.
"For some students, this may be the only meal that they receive for the entire day. So, with our campus food partner, we were very fortunate to have an on-campus food partner so we have a kitchen here on our campus that will prepare all meals for all students until this issue has been resolved and the conflict, there has been some amicable resolution," said Williams.
Other groups have been picking up the demand.
Several Papa Johns have been busy making pizzas for students. At just one of the Papa John's locations, staff made 350 pizzas Monday and they had to bring in products from Raleigh to meet the demand.
It's a partnership that Guilford County Schools Superintendent, Dr. Whitney Oakley that Guilford County Schools is relying on to feed kids across the district.
"We used a list of approved vendors that we already have partnerships with to help deploy things like pizza to schools from vendors that we work with, some schools were able to put together a combination of sandwiches and fruits and yogurts, so it really depended on the school and we went school by school to do that," said Oakley.
Others who stepped in were groups of teachers, PTA members, district leaders, and other employees.
Oakley said more than 200 other employees were pulled on Monday to help.
"We are working with schools on a case-by-case basis, we again think this is a reasonable plan, we want our employees to know that we have heard them and we want to build a pathway forward, and this is the first step in that direction," said Oakley.