The principal helped kids open ketchup packets. The first-grade teacher pretended her classroom was the ocean. The cafeteria supervisor served heaps of chicken nuggets.

All this happened recently as The Journal-World spent time on the job with five Lawrence public-school district employees. A common theme was that in the world of the school district, everything revolves around students, whether they’re classroom pupils or cafeteria customers.

Norma Basehor, food service supervisor

Norma Basehor zipped through a maze of industrial-sized mixers ovens and cooking pots in the kitchen at Quail Run Elementary School.

She wore the required uniform: an apron and a hairnet, no bracelets or necklaces, and no fingernail polish.

Her white walking shoes, which never seemed to stop moving, were the kind without ventilation holes on the top.

“If you drop a boiling liquid, it could go through those holes,” she said.

Every day is busy for Basehor, who comes in before 6 a.m., and the crew she supervises. But on this day, the masses outside the kitchen were especially hungry.

It was chicken nugget day.

“It’s one of our biggest days because the kids really like them,” Basehor said. “They buy a lot of seconds of them … We kept busy all morning doing the mashed potatoes and making the gravy.”

A batch of nuggets — 50 servings to a tray — was cooking in the oven at 450 degrees. A row of giant cans of green beans sat on one shelf.

“My main responsibility is to see that my children get fed on time,” said Basehor, who’s worked in food service for 40 years. “Our priority is our children. They come first. They are our customers.”

Basehor abandonded the kitchen for a moment to make the rounds among the 50 or so students who were eating around circular tables.

“You all love chicken nuggets, don’t you?” she asked at one table.

Later, she stood at the window where students returned their cardboard trays. She urged them to stack their trays facing the same direction, “just like a puzzle.”

“I’m not running at recess today,” one girl told her. “I’m full.”

Blame the chicken nuggets.

“It’s an excellent product,” Basehor said. “It’s good and tasty.”

Chris Bay, principal

A girl waved a ketchup packet in the air. Chris Bay knew the signal. He walked over, grabbed it from her hand and ripped the corner off.

“This is my chance to connect with kids,” said Bay, third-year principal at Sunset School, who was roaming the school supervising children during their lunch and post-lunch recess. “This is my chance to see every kid every day.”

Bay was in the midst of a standard 12-hour day, and he sensed there were e-mails to be answered and people who wanted to see him. His job involves regular meetings with teachers, students, parents, other school principals, and district administrators.

But he said he makes a point to sacrifice time in his office for time with students.

Today, the playground was too icy for outdoor recess, so after one class of fourth-graders finished eating, he lined them up and took them to their classroom.

“As we go down the hallway, let’s be respectful of the other classes,” he said.

Once there, the children began a game of what looked like “Heads Up, Seven Up.” Bay stood in the doorway, looking on, until the teacher returned from her own lunch break.

“I’ve learned that if you cannot multitask and change gears in a heartbeat and come back to it, you will be really frustrated in this position,” he said.

Paula Barr, first-grade teacher

Art class was finished, and it was time for Paula Barr to go pick up her first-grade class at Hillcrest School.

“Don’t get caught in the ocean,” she told a visitor as she pushed aside the blue plastic streamers that hung in her classroom doorway.

It was the first day of a three-week science unit about the ocean, and Barr was doing her best to create an underwater environment. She’d strung fishing nets across the center of the room, placed a beach umbrella over a reading chair, and brought in books about starfish and other sea creatures.

“Every second counts,” said Barr, who’s in her 21st year of teaching first grade. “Every second that I’m teaching, I want them to be gaining something.”

Barr walked to a corner of the school, found her 21 students and lined them up. Some of them slid their feet as they followed behind her.

“Could you put your brakes on?” she said at a corner. “Thanks for remembering your hallway manners.”

She told the students that between the hallway and the classroom, she wanted them to be thinking about how many tens are in the number 69 and how many ones are in the number.

When they reached the classroom, it was 1:45 p.m. The students gathered around her on the floor and she told them it was time to divide into groups to do a story-based math problem from a workbook.

“You can choose the one about cats, the one about dogs, or the one about animal boots,” she said.

Sherry Eales, principal’s secretary

Just what Sherry Eales needs: a box full of thousands of flimsy, plastic tubs with floral designs on them.

Someone had left this next to her desk on a recent morning. Eales wasn’t sure what she was going to do with them.

“I’m the stopping place for everything,” said Eales, principal’s secretary at Lawrence High School.

Eales’ days started about 6:30 a.m., when she arrived at school and checked a computerized database to find out how many teachers would be absent that day.

“I only have two today, which is wonderful,” she said. “My morning sometimes can be entirely involved in making sure every room has a teacher.”

By noon, she’d learned another teacher would be absent in the afternoon, and she’d assigned a substitute to cover. Principal Dick Patterson walked by her desk, and she handed him a stack of documents for him to sign, including a dictated letter and some purchase recommendations for the district’s central office.

Eales’ command center consists of a desk, a counter, an assortment of file cabinets, and at least 18 lion figurines as decorations.

Eales tries not to stray from this area. She knows people will need her.

Some need room keys. Some need to track down Patterson. Some need a hug, which Eales gave to a passing security worker who was upset about a personal situation.

Eales considers herself a caretaker– of records, reports, finances and people.

“I’m not opposed to making coffee, cleaning the kitchen, whatever needs to be done,” she said. “Whatever makes Lawrence High run better.”

Mary Rodriguez, human resources executive director

Mary Rodriguez, human resources executive director for the district, sat in a corner office at the school district’s headquarters, 110 McDonald Drive. On the edge of her desk sat a propped-up copy of a book called “Time Management 101.”

A bookshelf filled with policy reports, employment-law guides and statistics about the district’s 1,700-some employees covered one wall of the office.

Rodriguez pulled up a computer screen that displayed all of her engagements from the past week.

She’d met with teachers, principals, her human-resources staff, members of the teachers’ union, and other administrators. She’d given a presentation about the “No Child Left Behind” legislation and attended a luncheon for classified staff members.

On one day, she was the district’s “administrator in charge,” which meant she had to carry a designated cell phone at all times for 24 hours. If a district employee has an emergency and can’t get through to someone, he or she dials that phone number.

Rodriguez’s job combines number-crunching, labor negotiations and one-on-one human contact.

“The thing I enjoy most is working with people,” she said.

Her highest goal, she said, is to make sure the school district has well-qualified employees who enjoy working with children.

To do that, she oversees employee recruitment, settles disputes and complaints, works to streamline the application process, and tracks how well the district pays employees compared with other districts.

“Every position is critical,” she said.