A heroic effort to feed students in Chesapeake

As the country collectively reflects on the one-year mark of COVID-19, I am thinking about the countless ways the Chesapeake Public Schools School Nutrition Services staff has come together throughout the pandemic. Their unmatched resiliency and dedication to feeding our community’s children deserve citywide recognition.

Childhood hunger was an issue before COVID-19, and now the need is much higher due to parents facing lost jobs and wages. No Kid Hungry estimates that as many as 1 in 6 kids in Chesapeake struggled with hunger in 2020, up from 1 in 8 prior to the pandemic. The economic hardship this crisis has caused for many families will continue even as our community begins to rebuild.

For many students, school is the only place where a nutritious, wholesome meal is assured. During the pandemic, school nutrition services team members from Chesapeake Public Schools doubled down to ensure students stayed healthy and nourished.

When schools first pivoted to virtual instruction last March, School Nutrition Services in Chesapeake needed to innovate. Only then could we remove access barriers and reach more children, while at the same time keeping families and staff safe.

Two schools served as central kitchens where meals were prepared, packaged and loaded onto school buses. The meals were then taken to schools around the city to safely connect students with meals while promoting social distancing and other safety mitigation strategies. Our team passed out multiple days’ worth of “Grab and Go” meals at a time.

What started as a simple curbside service has grown into a program that serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks at all 45 schools from 3:30-5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Meal distribution is planned so that students will have meals and snacks for virtually an entire week.

To say that our teams are superheroes would be a vast understatement.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a virtual town hall hosted by No Kid Hungry Virginia that highlighted both the opportunities and importance of school and community meals in continuing to address food insecurity in the commonwealth. As a panelist, I reflected on all the incredible work nutrition teams continue to do for our community.

An initiative that has been tremendously helpful in building awareness with families is “SNN,” or “School Nutrition News,” designed to help spread the word about meal distributions. School Nutrition Services in Chesapeake created this program to allow our teams to effectively communicate to caretakers when and where meal service was happening and how they could access food for their families.

From the outset, we embraced an “all-hands-on-deck” mentality. From the superintendent to the school board, principals, community partners and nutrition staff , we rallied our collective efforts to ensure students received healthy and nutritious meals despite learning taking place virtually.

Since Chesapeake opened for in-person learning for select grades in September, our meal program, of course, has continued to be an essential tool for supporting student readiness.

The USDA recently extended federal child nutrition waivers — originally implemented last year — through Sept. 30. These meal waivers provide critical flexibilities and allow us to reach more kids. As schools and community organizations continue to reimagine traditional meal programs during this ongoing crisis, the waivers make it possible to connect kids with the nutrition they need.

At the end of the day, you can’t teach a hungry child. As our region continues navigating the economic, social and political impacts of COVID-19, childhood food security must remain a top priority. It’s imperative, now more than ever, that school nutrition teams, government leaders and community members come together to find long-term solutions to solve hunger in Virginia and beyond.