Schools around the country have been shut to prevent the spread of the coronavirus among their students, but some are going above and beyond the call of duty to provide meals to children in need.
School buses set out Monday morning from Caribou, Maine, to deliver lunches to children — a larger effort than just a week ago, when free lunches were available only to kids in town, at school parking lots and near low-income housing.
“We realized what’s happening is our rural kids don’t have the opportunity to eat because we’re not going there,” said Tim Doak, superintendent of the Eastern Aroostook Regional School Unit #39 in northeastern Maine.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced new waivers last week, days after passage of the bipartisan COVID-19 Child Nutrition Response Act, which allows school meals to be served at any time, in any manner, in any place to minimize exposure to the novel coronavirus.
“Under normal circumstances, meals served through summer meal programs are required to be offered in a group setting,” a USDA official said on background.
In other words, schools now can serve meals without requiring students to consume the meals en masse on-site.
Schools are getting creative with how they deliver the programs now that, as one school superintendent put it, the “rules are bent.”
At Tallassee City Schools in Alabama, Child Nutrition Program Director Loria Hunter said she sees “this as not just providing free-and-reduced families [meals] but those on the cusp of poverty, as well.”
Ms. Hunter’s team has begun preparing 300 meals a day to serve at three separate sites for a district of 1,700 students and plans to scale up as need increases.
Roughly half of the nation’s school-age youth qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, meaning they’re in households at or below 185% of the federal poverty level.
With millions of children now out of schools, experts warn that many children will go without food unless schools provide it.
“We are very thankful that the opportunity is here [to provide meals],” said Blake Gardner, superintendent of public schools in Hill City, South Dakota. “But I feel like we would’ve done it, regardless, because it was the right thing to do.”
Mr. Gardner said his district, which stretches across 570 square miles in a wooded and remote portion of the Black Hills, says they’ll find a way to personally deliver meals to kids who live out of town and lack transportation to reach the cafeteria, where a “grab-n-go” station is set up.
“I know every kid by name,” he said of the 460 students in his school. “We’ll get to kids who need it.”
Some schools are saying the federal response needs to be greater. Hill City, like many other school districts, does not qualify as “community open meal sites” under USDA’s Summer Lunch Program. This means only students currently enrolled in Hill City are eligible to receive meals.
And some powerful voices say — at least during the pandemic — this should change.
On Sunday, Maine’s congressional delegation signed onto a letter from Republican Sen. Susan Collins calling on Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to remove the federal poverty threshold — essentially calling for schools to be considered “community open meal sites” to serve meals to all children. They argue that nearly 20 schools in Maine are within a few decimal points of the federal 50% mid-to-high poverty level that triggers an “open meal” program.
“Removing the low-income area threshold and allowing all sites to operate without administrative burdens would go a long way to helping ensure that no child goes hungry as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” reads the letter signed by Mrs. Collins, independent Sen. Angus S. King Jr., and Democratic Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden.
Mr. Doak said that while his school district qualifies as a “community open meal site,” neighboring schools do not. Other school officials say without this additional waiver, many children may need to be turned away to these new food lines.
On Monday, as public schools in Aberdeen, South Dakota, opened new grab-&-go food options, a sheet posted to social media announcing the week’s meals included a disclaimer at the bottom: “Adults and non-enrolled children are not eligible for meals.”
But this isn’t the case in every school.
At United South Central Schools in Wells, Minnesota, where more than half of the area’s population is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level, food service workers last week started driving vans filled with sack lunches to fire houses in the rural district’s five communities.
“Anybody that comes up, as long as they’re under the age of 18, gets a meal,” said Pam Melby, food service director for United South Central Schools.
Ms. Melby says the towns have chipped in by donating coolers and baggies. On Monday, seven para-professionals assisted in preparing meals.
Chris Whiteside, transportation director for United South Central Schools, says his van drivers are seeing relief at the drop-off sites.
“We’re there from 11 to 11:30 in the morning,” said Mr. Whiteside, whose drivers disseminate lunch and the next day’s breakfast. “There’s an initial rush, maybe two or three minutes. And then everyone trickles in.”
