Live Oak Unified School District
We have an ADA of 1,906, and are currently a “CEP” Community Eligibility Provision District, which means our free and reduced population is high enough to qualify for free meals for all 1,906 students in our district.
This shows you the need and importance of this emergency meal program during this closure that was put on our Student Nutrition Department by the government that funds our meal programs. These kids are depending on the food we provide them now more than ever. We have heard so many terrible situations, where parents are having to stay home and give up income as they have no childcare, or going to the stores and finding empty shelves of all essential items, and now having children home using, and consuming more than ever, they simply are going without.
I myself as a student nutrition director am used to purchasing thousands of dollars of food and supplies each month from our vendors to make the food services operate, and being told by the vendors they are out of many items I need to accommodate such a service.
This has forced me to think outside of the box to ensure Live Oak’s children and its large need get the food they are now expecting and needing to feed their families. So today I drove to Cash ‘n’ Carry in Chico first thing this morning, right when they opened, well when they have opened for years, only to find that they changed their hours last night to 8 a.m.-6 p.m.
I knew I could not wait for them to open as we needed to get busy making sure we were prepared on day two of our meal service during school closure. We were also struggling because we did not expect such a huge turnout on day one of our service (Tuesday, March 17, 2020) and it wiped out most of our supply.
So, I drove in to Live Oak, to find my amazing staff all working together and doing an amazing job with what we had, but soon realized that we needed more supplies or we would be out by tomorrow. So, I jammed down to Yuba City’s Cash ‘n’ Carry in my two-door, 2019 Hyundai and bought everything I could, wiping out many of their quickly diminishing supplies. Jammed back with these random items to help my staff pull off day two’s service.
My extremely amazing, hard working, community loving staff did 285 breakfasts and 285 lunches day one and 485 breakfast and 487 lunches today! Thursday we did a total of 1,062 meals (531 breakfasts and 531 lunches), Friday we did a total of 1,085 meals (540 breakfasts and 545 lunches), Monday, 3-2320, we served 1,132 meals (566 breakfasts & 566 lunches), Tuesday, 3-24-20, we served 1,176 meals (588 breakfasts & 588 lunches). Wednesday 3-2520 we rolled out our first multiple day, drive thru/ walk-up service, that we served 828 children, in 249 cars (or walk-ups), each child received 6 meals, which included Wednesday’s breakfast and lunch, Thursday’s breakfast and lunch, and Friday’s breakfast and lunch, for a total of 4,968 meals.
We have received permission from CDE to operate our meal service weekly, on Mondays 9 a.m.-noon (serving meals for Monday and Tuesday) and Wednesdays 9 a.m.noon (serving meals for Wednesday-thursday-friday). We want to ensure as much safety as possible for our families that are depending on our services, as well as our staff that are risking exposure to provide this meal service.
Meals are available at Live Oak High School.