BERNE — At a ceremony during the Berne-Knox-Westerlo School Board’s meeting on Nov. 19, Deborah Rosko was acknowledged for her 30 years of serving as BKW’s food-services director in what was described as “a bittersweet moment of the evening,” by Superintendent Timothy Mundell.

Rosko’s 30th year at BKW will be her last. She will retire next month. Her last day officially is Jan.2, 2019, although she will be leaving on Dec. 21 due to the school vacation.

“I hope that I have made a positive difference,” she told The Enterprise on Monday. “And that is what it’s all about.”

Rosko, 60, had been a restaurant manager for a decade but wanted a job that let her have nights and weekends off to spend time with her children.

“Generally, working in a restaurant you don’t have that kind of hours,” she said.

After graduating from high school, Rosko worked in food services at Empire State Plaza when a supervisor suggested that she work in restaurant management, and so she attended Schenectady County Community College to study this. She worked in restaurants in Albany before working at Cindy’s Country Kitchen in Altamont before starting at BKW.

“I always came from a cooking background,” she said. “My mother was a cook, very creative, and I liked cooking.”

“Learn on your feet”

Her experiences at BKW were “a completely different kind of food service,” she said. She had to serve a much younger crowd and had new regulations dictating what could be served.

Rosko started at BKW on Jan. 2, 1989 as the head of food services. Her position has remained the same in her 30 years at the school, but the job has changed significantly, she said.

From the start, she oversaw preparations of school lunches, which were usually one type of meal. She now oversees breakfast, lunch, and after-school snacks at BKW, and offers different options for students to choose from.

Her responsibilities of receiving and transmitting information to the state and federal governments have moved from paper to the computer in her time at BKW, she said.

“When I started here, there were no computers; there was no email,” she said.

For a few years, Rosko also worked part-time as the Greenville School District’s food-services director while still working at BKW. She said she stopped working for Greenville a couple years ago when the district hired a full-time director.

Rosko said of her three decades at BKW, “It’s not that it was an impossible challenge, but constantly evolving to keep up with the new technologies, the new regulations, the new tasks being added to the position has really made the job very interesting. It never gets boring.” She added, “You learn on your feet and make the best of it.”

Nutritional standards for school lunches have changed, too. Rosko says she now sees more students getting used to the new, healthier choices and eating more fruits and vegetables.

“They’re getting used to the idea that that is part of the normal meal, so I think that the changes have already taken hold,” she said. “They’re going to be healthier for it,” she added.

Shortly after she started at BKW, Rosko joined the New York School Nutrition Association, a professional not-for-profit group with a goal of promoting excellent child nutrition, she said. Rosko said she also served on the association’s board for 20 years and also was the chairwoman of its Legislative and Public Policy Committee, communicating with legislators about how state policies could affect school nutrition.

Last year, Rosko spoke to The Enterprise about the factors at play in the school-lunch program. A “Paid Lunch Equity” price calculator determines increases for the cost of school lunches, which factors in the price of free student meals reimbursed by the federal government.

Regulations from Barack Obama’s administration included new standards on the amount of salt, fat, and sugar in meals and offering whole-grain breads and nonfat milk; these standards have since been relaxed under President Donald Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.

She miss the kids and the faculty

Rosko said that she had reached her 30 years at BKW and is ready to retire and join her husband, who retired two years ago. She is looking forward to wood-carving and hiking with her husband.

A favorite part of her job is to go into classrooms to talk to students about eating right as well as helping in health classes for older students.

“I’m going to miss the children,” she said.

She also enjoys working with other faculty members “who really care about what they do,” she said.

“I think everybody who works here — from the custodians to the teachers, the aids, the office people, I mean everybody here — is invested in our students … Basically, we’re a family,” she said.

Rosko said her typical day involves directing elementary-school students to breakfast so that they can get their meals quickly before the school day starts, overseeing workers and their food preparation, ordering ingredients, and coding bills.

“We’re always working a year ahead,” Rosko explained, of ordering food for the school lunches.

She said that she was once asked about how to sum up her day and had thought of the best response.

“I organize chaos,” she said.