School in the running for $500,000

LINCOLN — Daniel Beals watches every bump and rut in the pavement as he wheels a 5-foot cart loaded with trays of pizza and fish patties. The freshman at Lincoln’s Pius X High School will have to make the trip across the parking lot several more times before students line up for the first lunch period.

But a few — actually a lot — of Facebook friends could make life for Daniel and the kitchen staff a lot easier.

Pius X is competing with schools across the country to receive $500,000 from Kohl’s Cares, the department store chain’s philanthropic branch. The contest will award a total of $10 million for health and education projects to the 20 schools with the most Facebook votes by Sept. 3.

At this point, Pius X is the only Nebraska school in the competition’s top 100. Garton Elementary in Des Moines is 65th.

Pius X is shooting for a new kitchen.

The school has one kitchen to cook food and another for cold preparation and to serve meals to the students. Neither is big enough to accommodate the 500-plus daily meals, and the two sit a few hundred feet apart across a parking lot.

So the kitchen staff and a handful of student volunteers push carts of food and trays back and forth, totaling at least 20 trips a day, said food service director Tini Van-Oehlertz.

“We’re all over 50 and our hips and knees are wearing out,” Van-Oehlertz said. “I just want a kitchen before I’m in a wheelchair.”

Nearly everyone has had a cart fall en route, Van-Oehlertz said, and communication between kitchens is limited. But the biggest boon of a single kitchen will be a boost in food quality.

Before implementing the dual-kitchen operation, Pius had meals catered; before that, it got daily fast-food deliveries for students. In-house preparation has been healthier and more cost efficient, but the logistics have been a hurdle.

Since the Kohl’s contest kicked off in early July, the Pius community has pushed family and friends to go to facebook.com/kohls. With one week left, Pius X had climbed to the 16th spot, with more than 56,000 votes. Each person can cast up to five votes for any one school.

“It’s our senior class that got the word out. It’s our legacy,” said Pius senior Jeremy Dickes.

Part of that legacy has also been a slew of new Facebook users, including parents and younger siblings who created accounts to cast their votes, said seniors Kelsey Nealon and Lily Kennett. And since they finished voting, to some students’ chagrin, many parents haven’t left.

If Pius wins the prize, it will supplement the money with funds from the school’s annual dinner and auction fundraiser to cover the project’s costs, which Principal Tom Korta estimates to be $750,000 to $1 million.

If the school loses, Korta said Pius will move forward on the kitchen project with money from several years’ fundraisers.

“If we don’t get it, the positive that we get out of it is the support from the Lincoln area and the broader community,” Korta said. “And that’s worth more than a half-million dollars.”

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