On top of her responsibilities as a public school lunchroom porter — lugging heavy boxes of fruit, inventory checks, cleaning floors — Amy Mendez also finds herself consoling hungry little kids.
“Sometimes they don’t want the food, so they cry,” said Mendez, known as “Ms. Amy” in the lunchroom. “I have to find something because I don’t like when they go home and they [haven’t] eaten anything.”
After work, Mendez then navigates how to keep herself and her 13-year-old son fed. Mendez works a full-time schedule, but Chicago Public Schools doesn’t pay her for some of the days there are no classes or during the 12-week summer break. At $18.42 an hour, she’s among the school district’s lowest paid staffers…