Supervisor has 40 years with school district

Karen Boyer began her career in food services as a cook

Jim Miller/ViewKaren Boyer, a senior supervisor in the food services department with the Clark County School District, is the district?s longest-employed person. Advertisement

Sitting in her office in the school district's food services department, Karen Boyer looks happy. From inside her room, Boyer can smell much of the food that's cooked for the children attending public schools across the valley.

Those smells bring back memories.

As a 40-year employee with the Clark County School District, Boyer worked her way up from being hired as a substitute food services worker in the fall of 1968 to being named a senior supervisor in the department. In her current position, Boyer meets with the vendors who bring in food for the district to purchase.

"We look at the food and determine if it's something that we want to taste," Boyer said.

Also, she has to see if it meets the district's nutritional guidelines and price. If it doesn't, the product is out the door.

"Being a public entity, we meet with everybody," she said.

If Boyer thinks an item might appeal to students, she requests samples and then sends it to the kids for taste tests.

"It's quite a procedure," Boyer explained.

Smells of cinnamon rolls waft in through her doorway, and Boyer smiles a smile that makes you want to be in her position. In 1969, she was hired permanently by the district. Throughout her career, the food services veteran has worked at Martin, Smith and Robison middle schools, in addition to the old Las Vegas High School and Vo-Tech.

"Then I came to the offices as a supervisor," Boyer said. "So, there is room to grow in food services."

Not only Boyer has grown with the district, though. She has two daughters who also work in the public school system and her husband was the head custodian for the school district before his retirement in August 2007. Later that month he died of lung cancer.

"After that, I decided to keep working," Boyer said. "I was going to retire this last July, but I decided not to. I like what I do."

The senior supervisor mentioned that almost every day, she gets asked why she still works. She tells people very simply that she just likes what she does.

"I have good health, and if I didn't feel I could do the job, I'd go," Boyer said. "But, I've been blessed with good health."

The longest-employed person in the school district will be 74 in November, and at the present time, she has no plans to retire. For the 2008-09 academic year, Boyer has the most seniority of anyone in the entire public school system.

Sue Hoggan, senior supervisor in food services, has known Boyer for 15 years.

"She was my supervisor when I first came in," Hoggan said. "She's kind of been a mentor to a lot of us."

Hoggan said one of Boyer's best qualities in her position is that she looks at things from a kid's point of view. She imagines what they would want something to taste like, then gets their opinion.

"We want her to stay here forever," Hoggan said.

Boyer moved to Las Vegas in 1966 and describes her early years with the school district as being filled with making hamburgers, baking cookies and cakes and cleaning up the kitchens.

"At that time, we had more things to prepare in the kitchen," Boyer said.

Today, most items are baked and prepared in the school district's centralized kitchen, 6350 E. Tropical Parkway, where Boyer's office is located. So, yes, she's still in the middle of it all.

"In the kitchen, everybody seemed to get along really well," Boyer said. "There's never a dull moment, let's put it that way."

One of Boyer's longtime friends from the district, Launa Plancks, worked with Boyer for 17 years in the food services offices.

"She's a lot of fun," Plancks said. "She's the most patient person I know."

Plancks described Boyer as the office's go-to person when anyone needs a sympathetic ear.

"She always has chocolate in her drawer," Plancks said. "She's a chocoholic."

Co-workers know they can venture over to Boyer's office when they need to talk about something, and at the end, she always gives out a piece of chocolate.

"It has probably cost her thousands of dollars," Plancks said.

In addition to being a senior supervisor for food services, Boyer also is the department's representative for the Clark County Education Association.

"I think she's a kind person, she accepts people and has extremely good judgment," Plancks said.

During the conversation with Boyer, she recalls memories of the old favorite of many former school district students, the Virginia ham and cheese sandwich. Images of french fries and nacho chips with cheese sauce surface only to be replaced by visions of huge peanut butter cookies. Ah, the good old days.

"I think she could probably work there for 50 years and everybody in food service would be overjoyed," Plancks said.

Contact View education reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@viewnews.com or 380-4588.