Students will be eating in the new cafeteria at Bogue ChittoAttendance Center after the Thanksgiving holidays, but schoolofficials had to overcome a few obstacles to get it done.

“The frustrating part is that it’s not all done like we hoped itwould be, but it will be nice,” said Cindy King, child nutritiondirector for the Lincoln County School District.

Students were originally not scheduled to use the new cafeteriauntil after the Christmas holiday break, but the project wascompleted early.

The district decided to push forward plans for utilizing the newcafeteria by moving in during the Thanksgiving holiday.Unfortunately, some of the new equipment will not be ready untilmid-December.

Until the new equipment is ready, food service employees willhave to shuttle some items from the old cafeteria to the new, Kingsaid. She added that the district already has the necessaryequipment to do that.

The food will be prepared and cooked at the old cafeteria andshuttled hot to the new cafeteria where it will be served.

“This is nothing like the situation at West Lincoln a few yearsago where we were shuttling food from one school to another,” Kingsaid. “All the food will be prepared here. We’re going to do whatit takes to serve food to the students. We’re pretty flexible.”

King said she had notified the state health department and othergovernment agencies of the plan and they voiced no resistance.

“I wouldn’t serve food if we couldn’t be safe,” King said.

The new equipment will be put into use as soon as possible, shesaid. Some of the new equipment will be arriving next week withmore staggering in until the Christmas holiday break.

Some of the major equipment will require the cafeteria to shutdown for about three days to install, she said, but the districtwill wait to install that equipment until students are on theirChristmas break.

“It’s going to come together,” King said. “All the Bogue Chitto(food service) staff are coming in (Tuesday) to get acclimated,because the new cafeteria is twice as big as they’re used to. Wecan seat more than 200 now, and that should mean a shorter servicetime. It’s going to be real nice once we work through these minorquirks.”