Ms. Calandra "Rene" Beasley has been with Huntsville City Schools for over 18 years. She works at Lakewood Elementary. Calandra is not married and has three children named Darrious, Cambria, and Jaylen. She is originally from Huntsville where she has lived all of her life. Calandra describes herself as a person who is kind, peaceful, and can work with anyone. She expresses that seeing the smiles on the student's faces when they come through the line to eat is what she likes most about her job in Child Nutrition.

When she is not working, Calandra likes to spend time with her friends and family. She prefers to listen to rhythm and blues music in her spare time. Most of her coworkers may not know that she has a son that is 26 years old.

Calandra loves Child Nutrition because it gives her an opportunity to spend more time with her family. She also explains that if she were not working in CNP, that she would be traveling around the world. Her favorite hobby is gardening.

Calandra feels that CNP is important because it allows her to provide hot nutritious meals to students each day who may not get enough food to eat at home. Her favorite sport is basketball. She also believes that participating in CNP gives her the opportunity to help others. Calandra also hopes to one day travel to Hawaii. In the next five years, Calandra says that she will be retired. She defines success as liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it which is a quote from the great poet Maya Angelou.

Congratulations are in order for Ms. Tamika Herron.

Ms. Herron has been promoted from CNP Supervisor to Area CNP Supervisor.

Tamika has over 14 years of CNP experience and has managed over 20 CNP staff members.

She also has been at three of the largest populated school sites within the HCS district. These sites include Whitesburg Elem/Middle, Williams Elem./Middle and Morris Elem./Middle.

During Ms. Herron’s tenure as supervisor, these schools sites also produced thousands of meals with the highest weekly totals in the district averaging over 1761 served meals per day. Tamika and her staff were also responsible for generating over $1.9 million dollars in CNP revenue over the past 3 years.

Please join me in congratulating and welcoming her into her new role.