Donors make big things happen in small elementary

By DAWN PROSSER
Director of Communications
 
The town of Danbury in Woodbury County has approximately 315 residents while the Danbury Catholic School has 63 students. Thanks to a generous community, big things are happening in the small elementary school from six-figure improvement projects to homemade meals.
 
By the time the doors opened for a new school year this week, the 1960s-vintage school had all new windows installed. The school received a $25,000 Missouri River Historical District grant for the project and the school raised $123,000 from donors this summer to finish the project.
 
Molly Petersen, second year Danbury Catholic principal said before the installation of the new windows, water could still get inside the building during heavy rains.
 
“We were so thankful to raise the money to replace those,” she said.
 
The principal mentioned that the school raised about $100,000 last weekend at the annual auction and barbeque.
 
Students may not notice the new windows or realize the success of the annual fundraiser, but they did notice homemade hot lunches in the cafeteria. Petersen said the school leadership had been discussing for a few years the possibility of resurrecting their own hot lunch program.
 
“Once I was in place, Father (Bill McCarthy, pastor) approached me and said, hey why don’t we have our own lunch program next year,” she explained.
 
In recent years, the cooks from the Maple Valley-Anthon Oto School District prepared the meals in Mapleton. A cook would load the food into a school van and drive eight miles to Danbury to deliver, serve and drive back to Mapleton.
 
The principal said the district was extremely helpful in the partnership with Danbury Catholic and also flexible if lunch needed to be adjusted for scheduling.

Due to the requirements of the USDA, many schools opt to serve prepackaged food instead of homemade. Petersen pointed out that school lunch program staff have to document a large amount of data such as calories, fat content, sugar content and other information. 

“It had been on Father’s radar … he really wanted homemade food,” the principal said of Father McCarthy.
 
Schools that receive funding for free and reduced lunches must abide by the USDA regulations which call for the time-consuming data collection as well as more rigid menu planning. However, the number of students receiving free and reduced lunches was very small for Danbury Catholic.
 
“We decided we were going to fund that ourselves and we will cover those expenses,” Petersen said, noting supporters could cover the cost for a student or give an outright cash amount. 
“We are still making sure we serve well-balanced lunches,” she stressed. “There’s no free and reduced lunch reimbursements but it gave us the freedom to make a homemade meal.”
 
As the school had not staffed their own kitchen in many years, there were some upgrades that were needed from commercial appliances to skillets. Petersen was hesitant to reach out to the school community as they were raising a large dollar amount for the windows.
 
“I really didn’t want to ask too much, but I don’t know that you can do that here – there’s so many people who are so generous,” she said, noting that current parents, alumni, grandparents and community members are all supportive of the school.
 
In the end, she didn’t need to approach donors. The Danbury Catholic PTO held a kitchen shower for the school. They set up an online registry through a retail store where supporters could order and have it shipped to the school or make a cash donation.
 
“The shower helped us update some of our things like pans and new thermometers. Some donations we received had little notes written in where people would share some memories or just share that they are super-excited about our hot lunch program. It’s been really fantastic,” she said.
 
The school ovens were original to the school building and needed to be replaced. The principal said Brenner Entertainment of Ida Grove donated a commercial stove and hauled away the old equipment. Then two families from the Danbury church donated a second commercial stove.
 
Petersen reached out to parishioners to find a cook to run the returning hot lunch program. Through word of mouth, Holly Munsen, who had a preschooler at Danbury Catholic accepted the position.
 
“Holly had been praying for a part-time job or that something would come open,” the principal said of her new cook.
 
Both Petersen and Munsen successfully completed ServSafe training through the AEA and did their homework for setting up a new hot lunch program. The principal said she asked Patty Lansink, superintendent for the diocesan Catholic schools, if any other schools had recently restarted a lunch program and learned that there were only schools who had eliminated theirs.
 
However, the head cook at nearby St. Rose of Lima School in Denison came to Danbury to offer advice and staff at the AEA purchasing program offered crucial advice for the small school.
 
Realizing the school lunch program was going to feature homemade food, the Catholic school students requested chicken alfredo (including grapes, strawberries and sliced bell peppers) for the first day of school. Munsen obliged and prepared about 70 meals for the students and staff.
 
“The kids were so excited,” Petersen said. “It was so heartwarming to hear. They’d bring their trays up … and they would stop and tell (Munsen) that it was so good today.”

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